Sirius & Precession of the Solstice

6000 Years of Intercalation and Inundation

By Uwe Homann

Excerpts of this essay have been published under the title "Calendar Accuracy Waxes and Wanes with the Great Year" as Appendix B in the book "Lost Star of Myth and Time" by Walter Cruttenden, St. Lynn's Press, 2006, ISBN 09767631117

Index

Preface....................................................................................................................................... page 1

PART 1
From Sothic to Chaotic Calendars

The Modern Calendar............................................................................................................... page 2
The Ancient Egyptian Calendar..............................................................................................
Precession of the Equinox - A Miracle of Greek Science? ................................................ page 3

PART 2
The Rise and Fall of the Calendar

"Sosigenes' Calendar Reform" - A Glimmer of Hope In Dark Times..............................
The Cycle of Knowledge & The Calendar............................................................................. page 4
Sirius & The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar........................................................

PART 3
Sirius and the Summer Solstice

The Effect of Precession........................................................................................................... page 5
Sirius & Precession..................................................................................................................
Using The Position of Sirius - Better Than Precessional Dating?................................... page 6

PART 4
The Sun Behind The Sun

A Special Day In Egypt's Remote Past................................................................................... page 7
The Same Day Nowadays.......................................................................................................

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. page 7

Postscriptum............................................................................................................................. page 7

Preface

The following abstract is an attempt to outline and discuss some of the key points regarding the origin, the development and the underlying astronomical principle of our modern calendar system and to demonstrate as clearly as possible its failures and successes in history.

Calendars and Chronology are regarded as complex and difficult subjects, for the simple reason that the fundamental unit for our reckoning of time is derived from celestial phenomena which never correspond to an absolute integer relationship. Although we call a “day” the time it takes for our planet to turn once around its axis, and refer to a “year” as the time it takes to go once around the Sun, the definition of these periods depends upon the motion of the Earth in relation to other celestial objects. All of our time is measured from a rotating Earth!

Long ago, mankind already recognized that a "day" relative to the Sun varies and differs from a "day" relative to the stars. It takes more than 29 days for the Moon to return to the same phase and the Sun does not return to the same position in the sky after exactly 365 days. Thus, some sort of comprise had been made in the past to record time and to eventually establish a functional calendar system. Throughout history the degree of perfection depended upon mankind’s skills and methods of observation, as well as a clear understanding of celestial motions.

The view among scholars is that the more advanced the culture, the better the calendar system. Primitive man merely observed the seasons and lunar phases mainly for agricultural purposes, whereas early civilized man developed various lunar based solar calendars, for agricultural and ceremonial use. Eventually man invented telescopes and precise clocks, and arrived at a stellar based solar calendar – the hallmark of our modern civilization.

We consider ourselves the pinnacle of evolution - future discoveries merely require further scientific and technological advances. Any notion that man in remote epochs had detailed knowledge of the cyclical motion of the stars e.g., using them as markers for time, is quickly dismissed by experts either due to a lack of evidence or information. However, not everyone shares such a view. Some say that history amounts to a succession of continually re-emerging ancient civilizations, and that the rise and fall of such civilizations is somehow linked to a grand cycle of our Sun - a.k.a. the "Precession of the Equinoxes".

Perhaps the reason for our failure to contemplate such a notion is not so much a lack of scientific evidence, but rather our fear that the ancients discovered and understood the workings of the solar system and thus the underlying principle of the calendar. No matter how obscure or remote the evidence is, if such knowledge ever existed and fragments thereof survived ages of oblivion then somehow it would have to be reflected by man’s system of time-reckoning; i.e. through the principle of the calendar itself.

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