Ancient Ephemeris Time in Babylonian Astronomy

For a more full account of this stage setting, see: Explanatory supplement to the astronomical ephemeris and the American ephemeris and nautical almanac (London, 1961), 88–95, and The astronomical almanac for the years 1981 and 1982, pp. L1–L3.

This article draws on the main conclusions from the author's FMS. In an earlier version the paper was presented at the conference held on 30 August–1 September 1982, in the Vatican City, to commemorate the Fourth Centenary of the Gregorian Calendar. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican Observatory sponsored the conference and is publishing a volume of proceedings in which an abstract will appear of the present paper.

HAMA, 395, 1069.

Goldstine H. H. , New and Full Moons from 1001 b.c. to a.d. 1651 (Philadelphia, 1973).

FMS.

Neugebauer O. and Sachs A. , “Some atypical astronomical cuneiform texts, I”, Journal of cuneiform studies, xxi (1967), 183–218, p. 205.

FMS, 65–66.

Oppolzer Th.R. , Canon der Finsternisse (Vienna, 1887).

Stockwell J. N. , “Eclipse cycles”, Astronomical journal, xxi (1901), 185–91.

FMS, 87–94.

Brack-Bernsen L. , “Some investigations on the ephemerides of the Babylonian Moon texts, System A”, Centaurus, xxiv (1980), 36–50, p. 45.

HAMA, 486.

The so-called Archie scheme published in Aaboe A. and Sachs A. , “Two lunar texts of the Achaemenid Period from Babylon”, Centaurus, xiv (1969), 1–22. For my interpretation, see FMS, 84.

The Greek manuscript values are given in HAMA, 601, and they are interpreted in Rawlins D. , “Aristarchus's tropical and sidereal years and his pre-Hipparchian knowledge of precession” (in preparation). I am indebted to Rawlins Dr for private communication of his results.

FMS, 90–92.

Ptolemy , Almagest, quoted from the translation by Taliaferro R. C. in Great books of the western world, xvi (Chicago, 1952), 77.

See: SAF; Mercier R. P. , “Studies in the medieval conception of precession”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxvi (1976), 197–220, and xxvii (1977), 33–71; Moesgaard K. P. , “The 1717 Egyptian years and the Copernican theory of precession”, Centaurus, xiii (1968), 120–38; idem, “Thābit Ibn Qurra between Ptolemy and Copernicus: An analysis of Thābit's solar theory”, Archive for history of exact sciences, xii (1974), 199–216; Swerdlow N. M. , “Long-period motions of the Earth in De revolutionibus”, Centaurus, xxiv (1980), 212–45.

Rosen E. , Three Copernican treatises (2nd edn, New York, 1959), 136.