http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== *Illustration Gallery* *Astronomical Artefacts and Portraits, etc* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *The illustrations on this page have been compiled from a variety of sources. If advised that copyright has been infringed I will immediately remove the particular illustration(s).* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Return To Section Index Page* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Franz Xaver Kugler SJ (chemist, mathematician, assyriologist, historian, chronologist, and theologian). It would appear that this is the only existing portrait of him. Franz Kugler was born in Königsbach, Germany in 1862 and died in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1929. His birth-place Haus Königsbach ("Kings Brook House") still exists. It is located at number 21 in the re-named street Franz-Kugler-Strasse, in what is now Neustadt/Weinstrasse, Germany. In 1885 he received a PhD in chemistry. In 1886 he entered the Jesuit Order and in 1893 he was ordained a priest. In 1897, at the age of 35, the Jesuit Order appointed him Professor of Higher Mathematics at the newly built Ignatius-College, Valkenburg (in Holland). After the death of Joseph Epping in 1894 Kugler expressed his interest in taking over and continuing Epping's work. However, this task was originally assigned to Joseph Hontheim SJ. Hontheim took up Epping's researches in 1894 and sporadically continued with them until 1898. After the first year or two Hontheim had effectively ceased work on cuneiform astronomy. Due to the increasing number of other commitments that prevented him from proceeding effectively the Jesuit Order, in 1897, then assigned Kugler to takeover from Hontheim and continue Epping's studies. This is exactly what Kugler had wanted and had requested. Kugler's monumental work on the Babylonian theory of the moon appeared in 1900 (Die Babylonische Mondrechnung) and that of the planets in 1907 (Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, Volume 1). Volume 2 and supplements of SSB basically contain essays on a variety of topics relating to Babylonian astronomy. Kugler's recovery of Babylonian lunar theory in his Die Babylonische Mondrechnung was described by Noel Swerdlow (Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination (1999)) as "the finest, the most original, and the most difficult study carried out in the history of science up to the date of its publication." Babylonian lunar theory exists in two distinct forms, now known as System A and System B. In this book Franz Kugler (1862-1929) made the first identification and analysis of Systems A and B (which he called Systems II and I) of Babylonian lunar theory. Kugler also made the first identification of the relation of the parameters of System B to the lunar theory of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Kugler's book contains a complete discussion of the computation of the syzygies according to System B (called "System I" by Kugler), and an explanation of the most essential features of System A (called "System II" by Kugler). In his investigations Kugler largely focused on System B. This was because Epping's autograph of BM 34066 provided him with an almost complete ephemeris for the new moons of two years computed according to System B. The recovery of System A presented an immense challenge. As the relevant ephemerides were in a poorly preserved state he was obliged to recover the main features of System A primarily from a text for lunar eclipses. This text only provided the elements at either six or five month intervals. The classification of the ephemerides into the two "Systems," A and B, is based on the different way in which the solar anomaly is accounted for i.e., step function versus linear zigzag function. Each System consists of a set of arithmetic functions tabulated in columns in ephemerides and auxiliary tables, which enable the calculation of the times and dates of the syzygies and the magnitudes of eclipses. In System A the sun is assumed to move with constant velocity on two complementary arcs of the ecliptic (an arithmetical simplification which is not in accord with observation). In System B the successive positions of the sun are listed month by month, though these numbers do not form an arithmetic series because the velocity of the sun is not constant. System A appears to have been created in the second half of the 5th-century BCE. System B, which is the simpler of the two, was probably created after System A had been created. Both systems were used until the advent of the Christian era, not only in Babylon but also in Uruk. Kugler analyzed a large number of ephemerides of the Moon to make the identification that they can be divided into two systems. His identification and analysis of System I (which Otto Neugebauer later renamed System B) was based primarily on columns A to L of cuneiform text BM 34066, dated to the Seleucid Era 103 to 101 BCE. His identification of System II (which Otto Neugebauer later renamed System A) was laboriously reconstructed from multiple fragments of Baylonian lunar ephemerides (he relied primarily on BM 45688, which lists only oppositions which are lunar eclipse possibilities) and a procedure text BM 32651 (which contains the rules for the computation of several columns of the lunar ephemerides of System A). Title page of volume 1 of Kugler's multi-volume masterwork on Babylonian astronomy. This volume comprises Franz Kugler's masterful identification and analysis of Babylonian planetary theory. Copies are very difficult to come by on the used book market. Like nearly all of Kugler's work it was never translated into English. This first volume of the monumental Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel (2 volumes and 3 supplements in 7 parts, 1907-1935) served to complement his earlier study of Babylonian lunar theory. In his introduction to SSB1 Kugler informs his readers that the purely astronomical and chronological investigations set out in his book rely mainly on the previously unpublished cuneiform descriptions that had been copied by Johann Strassmaier SJ during his years of work at the British Museum, and are now being made available for the first time. Babylonian planetary theory had less ambitious goals than those for lunar theory. Babylonian planetary theory consisted of predicting the longitudes and dates of the principal synodic phenomena (i.e., synodic phases) for each planet. Babylonian planetary theory appears less sophisticated and less complete in comparison to lunar theory but this appears to have been a more matter of choice than of knowledge. The results had lesser importance than for lunar theory and so the motivation for the time-consuming calculations was absent. The contents of later volumes of SSB basically comprise collected papers on a variety of subjects relating to Babylonian astronomy (including the identification of the Babylonian constellations listed in Mul.Apin tablet 1). During his later years Kugler devoted less time to Babylonian astronomy and transferred his attention to problems of chronology (including biblical chronology). Kugler's pioneering work on Babylonian astronomy was never completed. His Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel was to have been completed in 4-5 volumes. Between 1907 and 1924 he completed 2 volumes and 2 supplements in 6 parts. After his death in 1929 a 3rd supplementary volume was completed in 1935 by Johann Schaumberger. This contained some of Kugler's unpublished material. Schaumberger, a member of the Redemptorist Order at Gars-am-Inn, Germany, had several years previously announced his intention to take up and complete Kugler's work. Schaumberger, like Kugler, was a competent assyriologist, and astronomer. However, after World War II, he worked slowly and sporadically. At the time of Schaumberger's death in 1955 a planned 4th supplementary volume was unfinished. Copyright © 2005-2006 by Gary D. 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