From Lunar Nodes to Eclipse Dragons: The "Fundaments of the Chaldean Art" (CCAG V/2, 131-40) and the Reception of Arabo-Persian Astrology in Byzantium (original) (raw)

Prior to the Hellenistic period, Egyptian priests were coyly mute in the matter of recording sky phenomena. Almost completely absent from surviving records is any reference, by way of myth, text or art-work to the observation of a solar eclipse. The universal 'ill omen' cachet regarding eclipses, seems to have led to the belief and practice of not speaking of, much less memorializing such events. This presentation reveals that, in striking contrast to the usual rule, a solar eclipse which passed over the Western Nile Delta appears to have been commemorated in the royal inscriptions on twin stelae, located in Naukratis and Thonis-Herakleion, requiring Greeks to pay import duty. The (Julian) date of this eclipse, 5 November 380 BC, falls within two days of the Prior to the Hellenistic period, Egyptian priests were coyly mute in the matter of recording sky phenomena. Almost completely absent from surviving records is any reference, by way of myth, text or art-work to the observation of a solar eclipse. The universal 'ill omen' cachet regarding eclipses, seems to have led to the belief and practice of not speaking of, much less memorializing such events. This presentation reveals that, in striking contrast to the usual rule, a solar eclipse which passed over the Western Nile Delta appears to have been commemorated in the royal inscriptions on twin stelae, located in Naukratis and Thonis-Herakleion, requiring Greeks to pay import duty. The (Julian) date of this eclipse, 5 November 380 BC, falls within two days of the Egyptian date inscribed on both stelae, presumably near the accession of the occult-loving King Nectanebo I. He seemingly reinterpreted the 'bad omen' tradition to fortell that his reign would be one of beneficence. The potential discovery of a previously unrecognised astronomical event should invite a re-examination of abnormal hieroglyphs on the Naukratis Stela, and may reconcile scholars to the apparent intermingling of ideologies of Egyptian scientific reticence, and the contrasting openness of Greek astronomical theories, in the 4th century BC.