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The Babylonian Month and the New Moon: Sighting and Prediction
... Porque contaron los meses por lunas, como luego diremos, y no por días y, aunque dieron a cada año doze lunas, como el año solar ecceda al año lunar como en onze días, no sabiendo ajustar el un año con el otro, tenían cuenta con el movimiento del Sol por los solsticios, para ajustar el año y contarlo, y no con las lunas. Y desta manera dividían el un año del otro rigiéndose para sus sembrados por el año solar, y no por el lunar"(de la Vega 1945(de la Vega [1609: 111, en Bauer y Dearborn 1998: 57).Su ciclo de fases, igual a 29,53 días, promediado en números enteros de 29 y 30(Schaefer 1992;Stern 2008; Steele 2010), ha servido como un parámetro indicativo del tiempo social, al menos desde el Paleolítico Superior europeo en el sitio de Abri Blanchard, en Dordoña (Francia, con fechas cercanas al 29000 AC(Marshack 1972), y la Venus de Laussel (diosa de la fertilidad) con representaciones de 13 ciclos lunares dentro de un año, con fecha del 20000 AC (da Silva 2010, citando a Joseph 2010). 360°), tras lo cual aparece como una delgada creciente por el oeste, cerca de donde se está ocultando el sol. ...
... Se plantea también la posibilidad de otro marcador al poniente, 54° al sur del cerro Las Cuevas en un nevado (no identificado), donde se tienen noticias de "grandes montones de leña", para la puesta del sol en el solsticio de diciembre. Según cálculos realizados por Hyslop, este evento ocurriría 2°30' al norte del nevado Hauthal (5340 msnm), coincidiendo con la falda oriental, del que se asume, es el cerro de Las Minas (5500 msnm)(Beorchia 2001: 205).La observación de ciclos lunaresDesde tiempos remotos, la observación de los ciclos de la luna ha sido el fenómeno de la naturaleza más fácil de registrar, sirviendo como base para la estructura de distintos calendarios como el babilónico, el árabe, el hindú, el judío-hebreo y el chino(Schaefer 1992;King 1993;Montgomery 1999;Stern 2008; da Silva 2010). Estos sistemas calendáricos asumen períodos de tiempo (fijo) a partir de la combinación de los ciclos sinódico y sideral de la luna, constituyendo también base para los distintos sistemas de creencias a través de la creación de constelaciones, mitos y deidades lunares. ...
We present social aspects related to the concepts of border, ushnu and lunar observation at the inca site of La Ciudacita, Tucuman province, northwestern Argentina. The analysis focused on the possibility of observing the lunistice or major lunar standstill, in relation to concepts of geographical latitude, architecture and horizon landmarks from the perspective of cultural astronomy. Our hypothesis is that the ushnu serves as a representation of the Moon at the zenith, south of the Tropic of Capricorn, highlighting its utility for following and predicting eclipses. Results show that the relationship between the ushnu and gnomon in observing the Moon's phases was possibly linked to relations of power and the expansion of Tawantinsuyu, circa.
... This rule is subtly different from saying that the month began on the evening of first crescent visibility: only visibility on the evening of the beginning of the 30th day mattered. The year normally contained twelve months but an intercalary thirteenth month was added roughly every three years to keep the calendar in line with the seasons (Beaulieu 1993, Britton 2007, Steele 2007, Steele 2011a, Stern 2008. Intercalary months could be added either after the sixth or the twelfth month. ...
... These methods made use of observations made 18 years earlier, and so allowed the length of each month in a year to be predicted a year or more in advance (Brack-Bernsen 2002). I have argued elsewhere that at least in the period after about 300 BC, and quite possibly earlier, months in the Babylonian calendar was always calculated in advance rather than relying upon direct observation of the new moon crescent (Steele 2007-for an alternate view, see Stern 2008). Beginning around the early 5th century, intercalation was governed by a strict 19-year cycle. ...
This article presents three case studies of the role of astronomy within the culture of Late Babylonian Uruk. I argue that in order to fully understand Babylonian astronomy it is necessary to combine technical study of astronomical cuneiform texts with wider cultural study of Babylonian scholarship, archival practice and society.
... Among the ancient techniques of interest, in addition to those used by the Babylonians (Fatoohi et al. 1999;Gautschy 2014;Stern 2008), is the so-called Indian criterion, which says that the lunar crescent is seen if between the sunset and moonset there are more than 48 minutes (Bruin 1971). This knowledge passed on to the medieval Muslim astronomers. ...
We show that the criteria of lunar crescent visibility of al-Khwarizmi (9th century) and al-Qallas (10th century) is not the Indian criterion, according to which the Moon will be visible if between the moonset and sunset there are more than 48 minutes. Therefore, we distinguished two new visibility criteria: al-Khwarizmi and al-Qallas, which we analyze and generalize.
This is a survey of the calendars of the pre-classical world, but excluding Ancient Egypt, so Ancient Near East in the narrow sense of the term as the term on occasion includes Egypt
All ancient civilizations BC had lunar months. But how exactly it was decided which daylight was daylight of Day 1 needs to be completely rethought in regard to the great civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. The present article proposes a new template to study a little pesky issue that affected just about all the people living in BC on a daily basis. There is this universal conception that the ancients began their lunar month with first crescent visibility. Fine. However, there is only possible definition of that method. The morning of Daylight of Day 1 needs to follow the evening in which the first new small crescent is first seen after conjunction (first crescent visibility is an evening, not a morning, phenomenon). That definition is not found anywhere in the ancient sources or in modern scholarship. The result is a massive deficit in conceptual clarity. In fact, I believe that lunar months nowhere in antiquity began with first crescent visibility. But they do in Islam. Consequently, Islam became representative of all of the pre-Islam Middle East and Mediterranean.
The purpose of this study was: (1). Developing learning approach problem based (PBI) inside their science lessons at-based school religion, (2). Developing learning strategies oriented science applications that can be used to solve problems in the community in the form of the establishment early in Hijri, (3). Increasing the ability of teachers in the areas of application and development of performance assessment to evaluate student performance (4). Design a learning cycle of science in the form of action research collaboration in order to obtain appropriate learning strategies through reflection conducted each end of a process, and (5). Developing partnerships between the school and are able to develop scientific LPTK both practical and theoretical. The the success of product is marked with has been can implementation of activities of the practice, reports activities of practice by the teacher, test results cognitive and students’ performance. High correlation 0.959 between student performance and test cognitive is one indicator of the success of the product.
The main principles of Qumran calendars are known to most scholars, but only a small circle of specialists have studied them in detail. The centrality of the calendars to Qumran culture, and more particularly sectarianism, was already recognized in the first decade of Qumran scholarship, chiefly by Shemaryahu Talmon, who went as far as arguing that the calendar was one of the cornerstones of Qumran's sectarian schism. This article first assesses the extent to which Qumran calendars differed from other Jewish calendars, both as literary compositions and - if Qumran calendars were ever used in practice - as structures of communal and religious life. The final part of this article assesses their long-standing interpretation as cornerstones of Qumran sectarianism. Qumran calendars can almost all be reduced to a single, common denominator: the 364-day year.
This article describes observational and theoretical calendars in ancient Mesopotamia. Some of the earliest cuneiform sources attest to calendar systems for the reckoning of days for administrative and cultic purposes. There were hemerologies which set out good and bad fortune days throughout the year and astronomical almanacs which contain the length of each month calculated for a coming year. This article suggests that Mesopotamian calendars extended into two other areas of astronomy that provide information on solstices, equinoxes, and the planets.
This article considers three questions associated with Ptolemaic-Roman lunar chronology: did the temple service begin on Lunar Day 2; were lunar phases determined by observation and/or cyclically; how accurate were lunar observations? In the introduction, Babylonian and modern observations of old and new crescents are analyzed to obtain empirical visibility lines applicable to Egyptian lunar observations.
This book offers a study of the calendars of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, Gaul, and all other parts of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from the origins up to and including Jewish and Christian calendars in late Antiquity. Particular attention is given to the structure of calendars and their political context. Most ancient calendars were set and controlled by political rulers; they served as expressions of political power, as mechanisms of social control, and sometimes, on the contrary, as assertions of political independence and dissidence. Ancient calendars were very diverse, but they all shared a common history, evolving on the whole from flexible, lunar calendars to fixed, solar schemes. The Egyptian calendar played an important role in this process, most notably inspiring the institution of the Julian calendar in Rome, the forerunner of our modern Gregorian calendar. In this book it is argued that the rise of fixed calendars was not the result of scientific or technical progress, but of major political and social changes that transformed the ancient world under the great Near Eastern, Hellenistic, and Roman Empires. The institution of standard, fixed calendars served the administrative needs of these extensive empires, but also contributed to their cultural and political cohesion. This ultimately led, conversely, to late antique perceptions of calendar diversity as an expression of heresy and cause of social schism.
Time in Antiquity explores the different perceptions of time from Classical antiquity, principally through the technology designed to measure, mark or tell time. The material discussed ranges from the sixth century BC in archaic Greece to the 3rd century AD in the Roman Empire, and offers fascinating insights into ordinary people's perceptions of time and time-keeping instruments.
All attested ancient Near Eastern calendars are lunar. Lost calendars and any transmitted only orally presumably were too.Keywords:ancient Near East history;science;sources and evidence
The aim of the present paper is to establish a lower boundary condition of a possible successful sighting of the lunar crescent based on Babylonian predictions and observations. This means that all Egyptian chronological options showing deviations in positive direction with visibilities below this boundary condition will be dismissed as impossible. Although a theoretical limit of 10° for the visibility criterion, i.e. a minimum lagtime between sunset and moonset of 40 minutes, is mentioned in text TU 11, the Babylonian Astronomical Normal Star Almanacs contain several predictions for first or last visibility with values smaller than 10° and the Astronomical Diaries a few such observations. Thus, a value of 10° for the lagtime is an inappropriate lower boundary condition which cannot be used as knock-out criterion for Egyptian chronological options based on lunar data.
We report the results of five Moonwatches, in which more than 2000 observers throughout North America attempted to sight the thin lunar crescent. For each Moonwatch we were able to determine the position of the Lunar Date Line (LDL), the line along which a normal observer has a 50% probability of spotting the Moon. The observational LDLs were then compared with predicted LDLs derived from crescent visibility prediction algorithms. We find that ancient and medieval rules are highly unreliable. More recent empirical criteria, based on the relative altitude and azimuth of the Moon at the time of sunset, have a reasonable accuracy, with the best specific formulation being due to Yallop. The modem theoretical model by Schaefer (based on the physiology of the human eye and the lor-al observing conditions) is found to have the least systematic error, the least average error, and the least maximum error of all models tested. Analysis of the observations also provided information about atmospheric, optical and human factors that affect the observations. We show that observational lunar calendars have a natural bias to begin early. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.
The visibility of the thin crescent Moon is an important problem for the calendars of many societies, both ancient and modern. With roughly 1 × 109 people of the Islamic faith following the Islamic calendar, this problem is likely to be the one (nontrivial) problem in astronomy that has the greatest impact on our modern world. In the past decade, great advances have been made in the observation and theory of crescent visibility. This paper reports recent observations and analyses. New records have been set for the youngest Moon, with confident sightings at 15-0 hr by John Pierce with unaided vision and at 12-1 hr by Jim Stamm with telescopic assistance. These records can be significantly broken under optimal conditions. Various prediction algorithms are tested with the 294 collected individual observations plus the 1490 observations from the five Moonwatches. The age and moonset-lag criteria are found to be poor, the altitude/azimuth criteria can make a confident prediction only one-quarter of the time, while the best predictor by far is the modern theoretical algorithm.
A wide variety of criteria have been proposed over thousands of years to predict the visibility of the young crescent Moon. Here, a rational approach to the evaluation of the many two-parameter criteria that are in use is proposed. A single combined ease-of-visibility parameter is derived and adjusted to zero at the limit where visibility becomes possible. The time of first appearance is correlated to this parameter. The criteria considered here perform about as well as each other except for those based on the time since conjunction.
In 19 years the moon will approach the place of the Normal Stars where it approached before. Where there was a lunar eclipse, it takes place (again). If (the moon) passed by (a Normal Star) high, or if it passed by low, it will repeat this in your year.[Cuneiform Text, British Museum 41004, rev. 18–19; translation by Neugebauer and Sachs: 17, 205].
Astrological reports to Assyrian kings (State Archives of Assyria 8; Helsinki, 1992), nos
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