All Queries 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Illustration

Quoted text:

There are many ways to count the parts of the human body. Astrology, for instance, divides it into two parts, from the head, ruled by Aries, to the feet, ruled by Pisces. Each part of the body thus corresponds to one of the 12 zodiacal-calendrical signs—that is, to a constellation which ruled one month of the year.

[Omitted text: Insert Illustration of the Cosmological Body; also insert image of the Zodiacal Man, or are these the same?]

It is awkward to count on full parts of the body. For such purposes the digits are preferable. But even here, there are many ways to count digits. The count follows not the number of fingers or parts of the body, but what is being counted.

There was a note here about illustrations originally included as a separate paragraph that we omitted. Can you help us find this illustration/these illustrations? (See also: Zodiacal Man image request.)

The note was:

“[Insert Illustration of the Cosmological Body; also insert image of the Zodiacal Man, or are these the same?]”

Any image suggested for inclusion in The Creation of Order must be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Illustration

Quoted text:

It is awkward to count on full parts of the body. For such purposes the digits are preferable. But even here, there are many ways to count digits. The count follows not the number of fingers or parts of the body, but what is being counted.


[Omitted text: [IMAGE OF THE ZODIACAL MAN, against the heavens.] [Caption:] This is used now more for medicine than for actual counting.]


If days of the month were the most important archaic things being counted, the vehicle for counting was the human body. The human body was divided up into counters—fingers and toes, parts of the upper body, and so forth. There is an ethnographic account of the first anthropologically inclined visitors to New Guinea, who asked the natives to count. They began with their fingers. But instead of stopping with the little finger, they kept on counting by touching the parts of their body, up the arm and across the face, then down the other arm—finally ending up with a clap of the hands, exclaiming “pongo” (Biersack[1] and Ifrah[2]).

There was a note here about illustrations. Can you help us find this illustration? (See also: Cosmological Body image request.)

The note was:

“[IMAGE OF THE ZODIACAL MAN, against the heavens.] [Caption:] This is used now more for medicine than for actual counting.”

This might be an image from the page.

This one is in the public domain and could be an option for insertion into this chapter, but we’re not sure if it’s the one Hudson meant.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Fact Check

Quoted text:

There is an ethnographic account of the first anthropologically inclined visitors to New Guinea, who asked the natives to count. They began with their fingers. But instead of stopping with the little finger, they kept on counting by touching the parts of their body, up the arm and across the face, then down the other arm—finally ending up with a clap of the hands, exclaiming “pongo” (Biersack[3] and Ifrah[4]).

More validation that this story is true is needed, and a check that it is appropriate and up to date. Can you help?

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2nd ed., 1957) (New York: 1969).

This is a guess as to what earlier was called “Neubebauer 1969” [sic]. Can you help us verify that the cited work was the text meant?

This affects the Chapter 2 Bibliography, the footnote citing this work in Chapter 2, and the book Bibliography chapter.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Irwin[5] (1962: p. 32) pointed out that in medieval England measures divisible by four or eight had a convenient calendrical function: “A peck of peas would last four weeks, since the peck was equal to eight measure-fulls and [the wife] would be using two measure-fulls each week.”
Can someone with access to this text help us to check this quotation against the source (Keith Gordon Irwin, Man Learns to Measure (London: 1962), p. 32)?
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Page Number

Quoted text:

Historians of mathematics infer that archaic populations must have counted on their toes as well as their fingers from the widespread systems of 20-based counting (see Menninger[6] 1969).

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Citation Needed

Quoted text:

…the Aztec number system was based on 20. Evidently the idea was to coordinate the counters (the digits) with the things being counted, beginning with the days of the 20-day Aztec month.

Most mathematical historians have explained the fact that the Aztec word for “20” was the same as for “man” by the fact that a human has 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Citation needed.

Perhaps this is answered in Menninger that was originally not fully explained as a full text to cite in the sentence before.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Table Query

Quoted text:

Table 2.1

Consolidation of the Bronze Age Solar-Patriarchal Kosmos
Lunar Attributes Solar Attributes
[Blank] Life-giving male semen becomes the characteristic solar fluid.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Table Query

Quoted text:

Table 2.1

Consolidation of the Bronze Age Solar-Patriarchal Kosmos
Lunar Attributes Solar Attributes
The 28 days of lunar visibility. [Blank]
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Fact Check

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…in Tibetan Buddhism with its Bonpo survivals.

Should this just be “Bon”?

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Query (Especially for Biblical Scholars)

Quoted text:

(I will refer to the four-signed zodiac in the biblical Cherubim, etc. Its traces appear often throughout the Bible, including the Wheel of Ezekiel.)

Should this be cut, or is it relevant?

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Illustration

Quoted text:

Skeletons of Ice Age horses have been found whose teeth show definite signs of chewing, apparently bridles. Furthermore, Ice Age paintings appear to show bridled horses [Omitted text: [Illustration(s)]].

Can you help us find this illustration/these illustrations? Originally there was a note here to insert illustration(s).

Any image suggested for inclusion in The Creation of Order must be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Illustration

Quoted text:

By the time the image can be picked up on the verge of historical times in Mesopotamia and related to mythology, the chief “intellectual” of the Sumerian pantheon, Enki (“Lord or en of the earth, ki”), appears cast in the guise of Aquarius the water-bringer. On cylinder seals he is depicted as “the god with two streams.” [Omitted text: [Illustrations like those in Van Buren 1949[7] and more recently Kramer and Maier 1989.[8]]] He typically is shown holding a vase of water, out of which two streams flow. Often fish are swimming upward (upstream).

There was a note here about illustrations. Can you help us find this illustration/these illustrations, or something like them (if the rights for reprinting are unavailable)?

The note was:

“[Illustrations like those in Van Buren 1949 and more recently Kramer and Maier 1989.]”

Any image suggested for inclusion in The Creation of Order must be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Fragment

Quoted text:

Leo in the south (summer, African), fish migrating in the spring (Aquarius: the rivers rising, with Pisces following. See Enki, the god with two streams, usually depicted with fish swimming up them.)
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Now the number 28 is a remarkable number, and was recognized as being such in antiquity (See Plutarch[9]).

Can you help us check that Isis and Osiris is the right Plutarch text to cite?

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Missing Chart

Quoted text:

The dodecahedron goes together with the icosahedron as a strikingly calendrical solid. [Omitted text: [(explain in chart from GEOMETRY paperback[10]). CHART (or is this an illustration?)]]
Can you help us expand in text and figure out what chart was meant here, based on the author’s note below:

“[(explain in chart from GEOMETRY paperback). CHART]”

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Also, what the texts “GEOMETRY paperback” and “CHART” refer to is unclear to us. Can you help us figure it out? The currently above-cited “A. Seidenberg, Lectures in Projective Geometry (New York: 1962c)” was a guess. (See also a possibly related item number 1 in this general query about Chapter 2’s Illustrations list.)

There are also five individual essays by Seidenberg cited in Chapter 3’s Bibliography, including at least one with “Geometry” in the title (“The Ritual Origin of Geometry”). Nothing by this author was originally cited in this chapter (Chapter 2).

We can add whatever text by Seidenberg is decided on back to Chapter 2’s Bibliography if we can figure out which text it was.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Fact Check

Quoted text:

In these prognostications the outermost planet, Saturn/Nabu, the “planet of justice,”…
Can you help us check that this is still the current research? According to Wikipedia, Nabu was associated with Mercury primarily, but Mercury was associated with Saturn. And Nabu was associated with Ninurta: “As the god of writing, Nabu inscribed the fates assigned to men and he was equated with the scribe god Ninurta. ... In the Babylonian tradition, planet Mercury was connected with Ninurta (as well as Saturn)... Ninurta is consistently identified with Mercury, and it is read that: ‘Mercury whose name is Ninurta travels the (same) path the Moon travels.’”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Citation Needed

Quoted text:

the Aztec 20-day months

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Cyrus Gordon[11] (1988: p. 293) has traced how the Old Testament devil—“the Satan” (always with the definite article, not his actual name)—seems to have been a celestial-deity as late as the mid-third millennium BC.

Originally this was written with the date 1988, so we took a guess at the publication that we added to the footnote (Cyrus H. Gordon, “Ebla as Background for the Old Testament,” in Congress Volume Jerusalem 1986, in Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, Vol. 40 [Brill: 1988], p. 293.) and confirmed we did find the quotation that follows in there, so we are pretty sure on the citation. However, it is possible that the year was wrong and this was meant to be 1987, reflecting a work that was cited in Chapter 3’s Bibliography (we have not added it here in Chapter 2): Alfonso Archi, “Reflections on the System of Weights from Ebla,” in Cyrus H. Gordon, Gary A. Rendsburg, and Nathan H. Winter, eds., Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Vol. I (Winona Lake, Indiana: 1987), pp. 47–90. If the quotations that follow are in that publication as well, let us know (“the horns of the moon and the tail(s) of the sun”; “‘horns and a tail,’ anticipating the familiar iconography of Satan”; “take cover behind locked doors until the menace of Haby passes”; and especially: Gordon concluded that “What may have happened is that his name was so feared that it was avoided. haśśātān ‘The Satan’ and o diabolos ‘The Devil’ both have the definite article, strongly suggesting that ‘The Satan’ and ‘The Devil’ are epithets of Habhaby/Haby, that gained currency to avoid the real and terrifying name of the demon.”[11]).

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Spelling of Term

Quoted text:

Tablets excavated in the north Syrian site of Ebla dating from c. 2400 BC describe an astral-deity Habhaby…
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Spelling of Term

Quoted text:

A millennium later in Late Bronze Ugarit (on the northern Phoenician shore) this same deity, now rendered as Haby, is described as having “‘horns and a tail,’ anticipating the familiar iconography of Satan.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Keywords: … But after the shift to solar calendars the words “lunatic” and “moonstruck” are more characteristic, reflecting the irregularity of lunar months.

The Keywords in this Key Concept (specifically the words “lunatic” and “moonstruck”) are not discussed in this chapter’s body. Can you help us add them to the chapter body discussion? Please include what to add and where in the chapter to add it, and any sources.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Religious sanctification: The sun-gods of justice were calendrical-gods, from Sumerian Anu through Greek Zeus.

This Key Concept (Anu) is not discussed in this chapter’s body. Can you help us add it? (Maybe it belongs where Zeus is mentioned later in the chapter body.) Please include what to add and where in the chapter to add it, and any sources.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Fact Check

Quoted text:

At the end of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar began the year with a new moon, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable lunar and solar calendars. This delayed January 1 10 days behind the December 21 winter solstice.

Can you help us figure this out: Is the year actually begun 11 days late, not 10 days late? (January 1 is 11 days after December 21, not 10; perhaps it was different in 46 BC?) This also affects other chapters’ mentions of Julius Caesar and the “10 days” in Chapter 1, the Epilogue’s Key Concepts section, and possibly others.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Ultimate dissolution: At the end of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar began the year with a new moon, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable lunar and solar calendars. This delayed January 1 10 days behind the December 21 winter solstice. (Later, Islam’s retrogression to a lunar cycle abandoned all solar moorings.)
Some of this is discussed in generality, but we’d like to see these specifics from the Key Concepts section about Julius Caesar (and his Julian calendar) and Islam in this chapter’s body; can you help us insert it in this chapter’s body? See also Chapter 1 for a cohesive discussion on both.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting

Dead Source Link

Quoted text:

Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2nd ed., 1957) (New York: 1969).

The source link may not be functional. Can you find another link to this source that loads more quickly?

This affects the Chapter 2 Bibliography, the footnote citing this work in Chapter 2, the Chapter 3 Bibliography, and the book Bibliography chapter.
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See also this query on Chapter 3.

  1. ↑ Aletta Biersack, “The Logic of Misplaced Concreteness: Paiela Body Counting and the Nature of the Primitive Mind,” American Anthropological Association, American Anthropologist, Vol. 84, Issue 4 (January 1982), pp. 811–829.
  2. ↑ Georges Ifrah, From One to Zero: A Universal History of Numbers (New York: 1985) [1981].
  3. ↑ Aletta Biersack, “The Logic of Misplaced Concreteness: Paiela Body Counting and the Nature of the Primitive Mind,” American Anthropological Association, American Anthropologist, Vol. 84, Issue 4 (January 1982), pp. 811–829.
  4. ↑ Georges Ifrah, From One to Zero: A Universal History of Numbers (New York: 1985) [1981].
  5. ↑ Keith Gordon Irwin, Man Learns to Measure (London: 1962).
  6. ↑ Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols. A Cultural History of Numbers (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1969 [1958]).
  7. ↑ E. Douglas van Buren, “The Rod and the Ring,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 17 (1949), pp. 434–450.E. Douglas van Buren, Symbols of the Gods in Mesopotamian Art, Analecta Orientalia, Vol. 23 (Rome: 1945).
  8. ↑ Samuel Noah Kramer and John Maier, Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (Oxford: 1989).
  9. ↑ Plutarch (Isis and Osiris).
  10. ↑ A. Seidenberg, Lectures in Projective Geometry (New York: 1962c).
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Cyrus H. Gordon, “Ebla as Background for the Old Testament,” in Congress Volume Jerusalem 1986, in Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, Vol. 40 (Brill: 1988), p. 293.
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