mysteries of egyptian zodiacs - HiddenMysteries Information Central

66 3 Previous Attempts of Astronomical Dating of Egyptian Zodiacs
Based on the Aubourg’s computations, S. Cauville claims
that the configuration of the planets on the zodiac was indeed
possible in the required period of time. However, a little
further she provides an explanation that can hardly support
such a statement. In fact, already on the next page 41 it becomes
clear that the planetary positions shown on the Round
zodiac, according to Cauville’s decoding, never appeared on
the sky in the specified by her time interval. Her solution is
simply based on manipulations with different dates for different
planets so the planetary positions could be compared with
the zodiac. Moreover, she does it only for two planets: Mars
and Mercury. It is absolutely evident that this type of “confirmation”
can be applied to any arbitrarily given period of time
with the same positive result. More precisely, S. Cauville dates
the Mars position on the Round zodiac by June 16, 50 B.C.
and Mercury by August 12, 50 B.C. 42 . The difference between
these two dates is about two months, what is relatively long
time taking into account that Mars is a fast moving planet and
Mercury is even faster than Marsy. During the indicated by
Cauville time Mercury actually had traveled through two full
zodiac constellations. However, Cauville “cleverly” neglects
to discuss the positions of all the other planets from the zodiac,
which by chance are different for the indicated dates. Let
us indicate that the decoding which was used for this dating
places Venus and Mercury on the opposite sides of the zodiac,
what is astronomically impossible. In addition, the symbols
of the Sun and Moon are interpreted, for some unknown reason,
as the signs of the solar and lunar eclipses 43 . Assume for
a second that these two symbols indeed were correctly recognized
as eclipses and consider their implications on the dating
of the zodiac. In her book, she suggested two candidates for
the date of the lunar eclipse: April 1, 52 B.C. (maximal phase
at 21:21 GMT) and September 25, 52 B.C. (maximal phase
22:56 GMT) 44 . But, these two ellipses are not full and in fact
similar eclipses are quite common and happen almost every
year, so it is not surprising that S. Cauville was able to find
not only one, but two such eclipses. Notice, that there is no
connection between the dates for Mars and Mercury and for
the lunar eclipses. Regarding the solar eclipse, she found the
eclipse on March 7, 50 B.C. at 11:10 GMT, which was supposed
to be almost full in Denderah. With the help of the
astronomical software Turbo Sky we found that this eclipse in
the Nile region was only partial and didn’t cause any significant
darkening of the sky. The trace of the maximal phase of
this eclipse was 100 km to the West from Nile, and therefore
from Denderah as well. Again, there is no connection with
the dates of lunar eclipses. The few year proximity of all the
suggested dates can not be considered as any kind of a proof
for any approximate date. Taking into account the above observations,
it is impossible to claim that the dates arount
the year 50 B.C., which were found by Cauville, are related
to any kind of a particular astronomical event. Is clear that
these dates represent absolutely nothing exceptional from the
astronomical point of view. In fact, it is possible to find such a
41 See [10], p. 12.
42 See [10], p. 12.
43 See [10], pp. 19–22.
44 See [10], p. 20.
sequence of astronomical situations in any arbitrary historical
epoch. However, we should point out that there was no justification
for the interpretation of any symbol on the Round
zodiac as an eclipse sign.
It is not possible to discuss all the mistakes and flaws
related to the astronomical analysis of the Round zodiac contained
in [10]. For example, the same symbols are sometimes
considered as planets and another time as non-zodiacal constellations
45 . Cauville’s wrong identification of Venus on the
Round zodiac, is a repetition of Brugsch’s mistaken identification
of this planet, which was discovered and corrected by
N.A. Morozov 46 .
There can be only one conclusion, that the whole analysis
presented in this book confirms again, that in the pre-assumed
by Egyptologists time interval there is no solution for the
Round zodiac. We refer all the interested readers to the books
[10] and [11] for more information on this subject.
45 See [10], p. 9.
46 See [4], Vol. 6, pp. 652–653.