Trying to nail down 612 BCE as the date of Nineveh's destruction

[Pudgy]

Sometimes … a scholarly treatise on the dead unicorn in your bathtub is best done with a chain saw.

[Pudgy]

I have no idea what that means, but it sure sounds profound!

F.Y.I., the ancient city of Babylon was located at approximately 32.5°N latitude. Some U.S. cities near that latitude include Phoenix, Arizona; San Diego, California; and Atlanta, Georgia.

Cities at the same latitude globally will generally see a similar apparent solar ecliptic, but there might be slight variations due to factors like local geography and atmospheric conditions.

The yellow line is the solar ecliptic.

[JW Insider]

On 3/4/2024 at 5:43 PM, xero said:

Position Relative to the Moon: When an astronomer described a star as one cubit in front of the Moon, they meant the star appeared roughly the width of your fist away from the Moon. The Moon itself is about half a degree in angular width, so a cubit was probably around 8-10 degrees of angular separation.

It might be good to read at least the first page of this work: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41670130

You won't need a log-in to JSTOR for it, because it's all on the preview page.

Basically, the point is that a "cubit" is indeed a unit of angular measure, but the paper uses a more stringent method of measuring it accurately by looking at the 200 or so planetary references in Babylonian documents, since planets move slower than the moon and some planets were only visible for a short period of time, and therefore we can know the time window of the observation more accurately.  

Basically, as you can see in the summary of the document, the cubit had been considered to be about 2 degrees, and a finger would be ¹/₂₄^th of a cubit. The paper will more accurately offer evidence of 2.2 degrees per cubit, a difference of only 10%. 

Also, on the question of what is in front of or behind, the following will likely make the most sense to you after you have looked at enough observations and compared them with your Stellarium screen (or any other software that does this).a

Even though it's easier to envision the horizon rather than the ecliptic, it still generally works out that words Babylonians used in their "astronomy" mapped as follows:

• North=Above,
• South=Below,
• East=Behind,
• West=In Front. 

For the parts of the sky closest to the horizon, especially towards the west,  it therefore works out like the old "Western" movie cliche, where "the sun sinks slowly into the west." So it's easy to imagine that most of the heavenly objects are sinking in that direction therefore the sun was in front of all the stars that will also "sink" in that general direction. Therefore all the stars along MOST of the sky that are still farther east are behind, heading racing toward the horizon. And they will also be in the same "in front" or "behind" positions when  they appear to come up on the eastern horizon the next morning. 

[JW Insider]

@xero, i don't know how far along you are but Stellarium is a great tool for this, and I see you are using the Mul.Apin Sky Culture. It saves time from having to keep track of the Babylonian star names yourself.

I suspect there will be some others here who might try the Stellarium software, too. If so, they should know that it's good to get more than use the online web version. It's great, but the desktop version gives you everything you need.

It's free. Although you are allowed to donate. 

You can download and install the latest version 23.3 or 23.4 from here: https://stellarium.org/release/2023/09/25/stellarium-23.3.html

Once installed, you will want to change the location to somewhere near Babylon. The city @xero picked is below:

Once you install it, you can hover your mouse over the bottom left edge of the screen and select the icon just under the clock:

"Sky and Viewing Options [F4]"

Then select "Sky Culture" from the top of that newly opened window, and pick Babylonian -- MUL.APIN:

Now when you close that window, pick the clock icon you saw earlier. 

Start with any BCE date you like, but I think most people will try either 588 BCE or 568 BCE if the first thing they want to check is VAT 4956:

Along the bottom of the screen, if you hover the mouse over the bottom left edge of the screen you will see some other options:

The first two highlighted ones will toggle the borders of the constellations on, which is helpful. The second one toggles the names on and off. But you will also probably want to experiment with the imagery and the horizon/landscape settings which you can make disappear or make  almost transparent. You can also use the arrow keys and Page Up and Page Down to zoom in and out and turn the orientation so that you are facing due West which is my favorite place to start. 

The last thing to do after orienting your screen is to go back to that Clock icon and set the year, month, day, and time. If you want to check 568 BCE first, then type the following into the date and time boxes. For purposes of VAT 4956 I would start on January 1, 568 BCE. In astronomy dates 568 BCE is written as -567, due to the zero year issue. So that's actually written as -567:01:01 -- 00:00:01. You don't have to spin it all the way back; you can type numbers into the fields. Here I will set it for 4:45 in the afternoon.

16:45 (4:45pm) is pretty close to sundown on January 1, but you can "spin" the dial forward to just after sundown so that you can actually see the visible stars:

If you make it even later after sundown, the glow of the sun is gone, and you can see more constellations fall below the horizon. Just for fun I have also toggled the ecliptic lines which might come in handy for later:

That's pretty much the set-up although there's a ton of other things to play with.

 

[JW Insider]

One more important thing is to click on the Moon (also called SIN in this Sky Culture, because the Moon god was named SIN). You will be able to see one of the lines of information showing the phase of the moon which will be very important. At this time on January 1st, the phase is: "Moon Age: 8.1 days old (Waxing Gibbous)"

That means that at 7pm, when I took this screenshot, it was now 8.1 days since the new moon sliver began, and the sliver was "waxing" or growing bigger (prior to the full moon). After the full moon the phase becomes "Waning Gibbous," getting smaller again until the moon disappears and starts a new sliver (new moon) for a new month.

 

[JW Insider]

We can use the "new moon" -- the transition between waning and waxing -- to not only find the beginning of the new month, but also the beginning of the new year. The new year was the month starting the first day of Nisannu, just like the Hebrew "sacred" new year was started on the first day of Nisan.

The new year started Nisannu the 1st, and the month Nisannu was the month that started closest to the spring equinox. Therefore the first full moon after the spring equinox should always be within a day of Nisan 14. That's because there are 29.5 days in a lunar month, so months typically alternated between 29 and 30 days for an average of 29.5. The middle of a 29-day month could land closer to the 14th, and the middle of a 30-day month could land closer to the 15th. Also, it depended on whether there was a delay in actually seeing the new moon sliver which could easily delay by a day.

Note the Watchtower's comment on Nisan 14 here:

*** w76 2/1 p. 73 “Keep Doing This in Remembrance of Me” ***
According to our present method of calculation, the Memorial date approximates the nearest full moon after the spring equinox. For example, in 1975 the Memorial date, as calculated fourteen days from the new moon (nearest the spring equinox) visible in Jerusalem, was Thursday, March 27, after sundown. Appropriately, there was also a full moon on Thursday, March 27, 1975. The date for Memorial in 1976, calculated by our present method, falls on Wednesday, April 14, after sundown. The full moon also occurs on this same date. So if, in the future, any of Jehovah’s people should be out of touch with the governing body, they could determine the Memorial date with fair accuracy from local calendars that show the first full moon after the spring equinox. The celebration would then take place after sundown of the day on which the full moon occurs.

So a fun experiment is to see if you can use just observation in the software program to find the date of the new year. You can probably find Nisannu just by looking for the exact time the phase changes from waning to waxing (the new sliver) and find the one closest to the Spring Equinox. That always puts the first full moon after the spring equinox in March or April, and very rarely, early in May.

If you scroll through the dates, you find the first new moon is on January 23, -567. The next one is on February 22nd. Still too early. The next one is on March 23rd. A good candidate. And the next one is on April 23rd. Also a good candidate. And we have to know something about Babylonian observations to figure out which one of those last two is the best candidate. But we can take a good guess and see if it matches the scholars later. 

After guessing, we can check it against page 26 of Parker and Dubberstein: https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/saoc24.pdf

P & D had the advantage of checking hundreds of dated clay tablets to be able to know which years had the leap month, and that produced a much more sure version of the Babylonian calendar. 

What Stellarium will let you do is see how much the sun's glare might have interfered with the ability to see a new moon sliver. If it couldn't be seen, the month started the next day. Also, they new it was due if the previous month had 30 days. But some months would have only 29 which would pretty much mean the next month should have 30.

[Pudgy]

A pretty cool tool for angular “rule of fist” astronomical observations is available for any IPhone. Mine is about 8 years old.

THEODOLITE - On the App Store. 

 

[xero]

@JW InsiderI tried the web version 1st, but that lacked the ability to go back to BCE dates. All the other things (besides my continued dyslexia w/regard to dates BCE - as a developer, I would have fixed that so people didn't have to play with numbers).

What I'm still trying for is what view will show me the on-the-ground view and how to translate "the rule of fist?"=cubit to what I'm looking at.

[George88]

 

[Pudgy]

24 minutes ago, xero said:

@JW InsiderI tried the web version 1st, but that lacked the ability to go back to BCE dates. All the other things (besides my continued dyslexia w/regard to dates BCE - as a developer, I would have fixed that so people didn't have to play with numbers).

What I'm still trying for is what view will show me the on-the-ground view and how to translate "the rule of fist?"=cubit to what I'm looking at.

If you have a Smart Phone “Sky Guide” App will do that.

The super cool thing is that for the current time and location the real sky is always directly BEHIND the phone, and what’s on the screen.

[Pudgy]

?????

[JW Insider]

21 hours ago, xero said:

@JW InsiderI tried the web version 1st, but that lacked the ability to go back to BCE dates. All the other things (besides my continued dyslexia w/regard to dates BCE - as a developer, I would have fixed that so people didn't have to play with numbers).

What I'm still trying for is what view will show me the on-the-ground view and how to translate "the rule of fist?"=cubit to what I'm looking at.

I see a lot of online claims about the Babylonian and Egyptian measurements using fingers, hand, four-fingers, four-fingers+thumb, double-hands, fist, double-fists, forearm, foot, etc., and not all of them are accurate. It looks like the Egyptians had a specific fist-measure, but I don't see anything in the Babylonian documents that define the fist as a measure. I have deferred to Steele, Neugebauer, Sachs/Hunger, Stephenson/Fatoohi, and a few other resources on the standards of measurement in use. If you have access to the full documents below, I found that these ones were useful:

Pathways into the Study of Ancient Sciences

Isabelle Pingree, John M. Steele, Charles Burnett, DAVID EDWIN PINGREE, Erica Reiner

https://www-jstor-org.azp1.lib.harvard.edu/stable/24398230

Angular measurements in Babylonian astronomy

L. J. Fatoohi, F. R. Stephenson

Archiv für Orientforschung, Bd. 44/45 (1997/1998), pp. 210-214

The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods

O. Neugebauer

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1945), pp. 1-38

https://www-jstor-org.azp1.lib.harvard.edu/stable/542323

Babylonian Mathematics

Raymond Clare Archibald

Isis, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Dec., 1936), pp. 63-81

 

A New Look at the Constellation Figures in the Celestial Diagram

Author(s): Donald V. Etz Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 1997, Vol. 34 (1997), pp. 143-161 Published by: American Research Center in Egypt Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000803

 

Babylonian Horoscopes

Author(s): Francesca Rochberg Source: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1998, New Series, Vol. 88, No. 1 (1998), pp. i-xi+1-164 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006632

 

I thought that the Fatoohi/Stephenson method was the best to determine that a finger remained a consistent 0.092 degrees from 600 BCE to about 50 BCE. And that a cubit measure (as an angle) was consistently 2.2 degrees.  Those can give some good working numbers for comparing the measurements on several tablets to Stellarium readings.

 

I was surprised to learn that there are ancient measurement standards "set in stone" for lengths of a cubit, number of fingers in a cubit (24), 'how to draw a human body' templates with proportions (measured in fists, even). Although there were different cubits and measures in different countries, there were also some commonalities between "feet" measures between Egypt and Mesopotamia that could only have meant that one influenced the other for a trade standard. Most of the above papers discuss celestial measurements, and I include them because there is even some  speculation that the Babylonians and Egyptians were sometimes measuring with various instruments, not just with hands. By the 500's BCE their influence on Pythagoras was already obvious and accurate enough for some mathematical formulas based on their ancient observations. And I had never actually looked at Ptolemy's writings before this year, and was amazed that his access to and reliance on ancient Babylonian astronomy documents allowed him to go into such accurate mathematical detail. (I linked to Ptolemy's Almagest in an earlier post.)