mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
1 Sirius & Precession of the Solstice

6000 Years of Intercalation and Inundation

By Uwe Homann

Index

Preface ................................. page 2

PART 1 From Sothic to Chaotic Calendars

The Modern Calendar ...................... page 3 

The Ancient Egyptian Calendar............. page 4 

Precession of the Equinox 
- A Miracle of Greek Science? ............ page 5

PART 2 The Rise and Fall of the Calendar

"Sosigenes' Calendar Reform" - A Glimmer of Hope In Dark
Times...................................... page 7 

The Cycle of Knowledge & The Calendar...... page 8 

Sirius & The Origin of the Ancient
Egyptian Calendar..................     ... page 9

PART 3 Sirius and the Summer Solstice

The Effect of Precession................... page 12 

Sirius & Precession........................ page 12

Using The Position of Sirius - Better Than Precessional
Dating?.................................... page 14

PART 4 The Sun Behind The Sun

A Special Day In Egypt's Remote Past....... page 16 

The Same Day Nowadays...................... page 17

Conclusion............                      page 19

2 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 oe
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.

3 PART 1

From Sothic to Chaotic Calendars

The Modern Calendar

If we ask someone --What day is today?" it is usually not because we
have forgotten in which year or month we live in, but rather what day
of the week it is. Ever since we went to Kindergarten we know that a
week has seven days, which keep repeating over and over in the same
sequence as they have done for thousands of years. But sometimes we
are so busy in our weekly routines that we hardly think about the fact
that a certain day in a certain month of the year is actually more
important for an accurate reckoning of time than the rule that a
particular day of the week is called Sunday, for instance.

However, it wasn`t always like that. A little more than four centuries
ago, the Fathers of the Church had a big problem on their hands.
Relying like heathens on a lunar based solar calendar, they eventually
noticed that their Easter Day, which they always wanted to celebrate
on a Sunday following the fourteenth day of the paschal moon, whose
fourteenth day followed the spring equinox, has diverged significantly
from the latter. While this may sound like a religious problem; i.e.
--primarily a matter of ecclesiastical discipline" as the Church has
always maintained, it is in reality an astronomical problem. The Sun
and the Moon in the heavens are not the same as the fictional Sun and
the Moon of the calendar.

When in 325 CE the Council of Nicaea already lay out some of the rules
and principles regarding the celebration of Easter, the spring equinox
did, in fact, occur on or around March 21st as it does nowadays. This
was not one of those infamous astronomical coincidences, as we shall
see later, but the result of careful astronomical observations in the
past and a knowledge that has been lost.

For almost another 1300 years, as the world passed through some of its
darkest ages, the established lunar- solar calendar of 365.25 days
slowly diverged from the day of the spring equinox, which people in
ancient times had always regarded as an auspicious day. Monuments,
dating back to prehistoric times can tell us still today the exact
position of the equinoxes and the solstices. But over many thousands
of years, with the deterioration of ancient stellar cults down from
solar cults to lunar cults, the knowledge of how to keep track of
solar-sidereal time almost completely vanished, especially it seems
during the period from around 200 CE to 1582 CE (the year of the
Calendar Reform).

It appears mankind was just too busy destroying each other. When
through their periodic processes of war and invasions the soldiers of
faith and fortune happened to stumble across genuine ancient
knowledge, no sooner said than done was it burned and eradicated along
with its former possessors. Even if some of the early invaders had
--discovered" the great pyramid of Chichén-Itzá, they would have had
no clue that this magnificent and ingenious monument represents more
than a device to accurately observe the cycle of the equinoxes oe
hidden in the jungle it truly represented a symbol of a lost wisdom.
Because long before medieval Europe conquered Mesoamerica, the
ancestors of the Mayan possessed a functional calendar system that
accounted for the minute yet crucial time difference that occurs
between a year of 365.25 days and the actual solar year.

Scholars have unearthed, studied and interpreted as much as they could
find, and when there was a lack of evidence or knowledge, Gods and
myths served as explanations until only symbols, religious calendars,
rituals and places of cult worship remained. While the real
significance of the Mayan calendar seems to have been lost, we cannot
deny the fact that it employs the same fundamental 4-year leap system
that applies to our modern calendar. But in order to achieve greater
accuracy over longer time frames, the ancient calendar makers
discovered mathematical combinations and devised an ingenious system
of leap- days that makes our modern calendar look primitive in
comparison. They were fully aware of the fact that a solar year does
not consist of 365.25 days or more, as there is strong evidence that
they established a leap- day system that required the omission of one
day approximately every 128.18 solar years.

4 Calendars are chronological instruments to count days, weeks, months
and years. However, without a precise knowledge of the fundamental
time period, which forms the mathematical basis of the calendar
system, the names given to days and groups of days have no meaning
compared to the old astrological symbols. The basic unit for
calculating time is the period it takes for Earth to make a complete
revolution around the Sun. This time interval is the so-called
tropical year, and modern observations have shown that it consists of
365.24219878 mean solar days.

And it is solely because of this difference; i.e. one day in about
128.18 solar years - that the 21st of March in Europe`s old Julian
calendar no longer occurred at the time of the vernal equinox. The
reason it took the Church so long to correct it was in the end not so
much a failure of making out the mistake itself, but rather a failure
of understanding the reason for it and of course, a lack of knowledge
of how to correct it.

In 1582 CE, with the help of a clever mathematician named
Christophorus Clavius, the old-style calendar was finally corrected by
10 days, i.e. the accumulated astronomical time difference of one day
every 128.18 years. A simple calculation proves that the solar
calendar was correct until shortly before 300 CE:

1582 oe (10 þ 128.2) = 300

In order to avoid a similar mishap, certain rules of intercalations
were introduced to keep our civil calendar more or less in synch with
Earth`s solar or tropical year (at least for the next 3000 years or
so).

The Ancient Egyptian Calendar

Regardless, we cannot blame early medieval Europeans for not knowing
anything about advanced cultures that lived across oceans and beyond
high mountain ranges. They could not destroy things that did not exist
for them. Unfortunately, the situation was a lot different for a
country called Egypt. It was easily accessible, as Alexander the Great
had demonstrated so effectively prior to the times of the Romans and
the Crusaders.

Historians inform us about all the glorious and gory details of the
--tribal conflicts" that occurred, and a special branch of them, the
Egyptologists, have specialized in that part of our history that deals
exclusively with the culture of Ancient Egypt; commonly referred to as
the Dynastic period or the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

In the past, many valuable discoveries have been made by
archeologists, geologists and other fields of science including
astronomy. Some Egyptologists still rely on excavations of pottery and
other objects and are suspicious of mathematically dating the reigns
of Kings and Pharaohs based on astronomical phenomena. Others,
together with a number of scientists and researchers have formed a new
branch of science, called archeo-astronomy. Thanks to the efforts of
various independent researchers over the last few decades, and
especially during the recent one, a new understanding of the knowledge
of ancient (and more importantly pre-dynastic) Egypt gradually emerges
from the sand oe i.e. the sand that was thrown into our eyes. Because
for some reason it was astronomers, and not necessarily Egyptologists,
that set the course of events. According to them, the ancient
Egyptians completely lacked any astronomical knowledge.

For instance, the scholar and astronomer Otto Neugebauer believed that
"...there is no astronomical phenomenon which possibly could impress
on the mind of a primitive observer that a lunar month lasts 30 days
and a solar year contains 365 days. Observation during one year is
sufficient to convince anybody that in about six cases out of twelve
the moon repeats all its phases in only 29 days and never in more than
30; and forty years' observation of the sun (e.g., of the dates of the
equinoxes) must make it obvious that the year fell short by 10 days!
The inevitable consequence of these facts is, it seems to me, that
every theory of the origin of the Egyptian calendar which assumes an
astronomical foundation is doomed to failure.....I still think that
this theory is in perfect agreement with the structure of the Egyptian
calendar, which has only three seasons, admittedly agricultural and
not astronomical, and which has no reference to Sothis at all."

O. Neugebauer, "The Origins of the Egyptian Calendar", JNES 1 (1942),
397-403

5 Neugebauer imagined that a period of 240 years was needed to
establish a year of 365 days based on the periodic flooding of the
river Nile (a hypothesis which already presumes that the duration of
the year is 365 days!). The flooding did not always make its first
appearance on a fixed day - even today the fluctuations run over a
period of six weeks and more (Neugebauer himself admitted that it can
vary by as much as 60 days).

However, wishing to deduce an establishment of a Sothic year of 365.25
days based on the flooding of the Nile in relation to the remarkable
astronomical phenomenon of the helical rising of Sirius is in the
words of the Egyptologist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, "a feat of skill
which would dignify clairvoyance rather than ratiocination."

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, --Sacred Science", Inner Traditions (1982)

At this point it would be interesting to mention that Otto Neugebauer,
who wrote extensively about Babylonian astronomy, also discussed the
so-called Solstice-Equinox-Sirius texts, which formed part of the
--Astronomical Diaries". These texts list equinoxes, solstices,
heliacal risings and settings of Sirius from the period of around 600
BCE and around 330 BCE. Apparently, the position of Sirius relative to
the solstices and equinoxes did not change over time with precession.
Neugebauer therefore, concludes: "This is, incidentally, further
evidence for the fact that the Babylonian astronomers were not aware
of the existence of precession."

Otto Neugebauer, --A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy" (Part
1, Page 543, Note 13)

We will see that Neugebauer could not have been any further from the
truth - already for the ancient Egyptians, Sirius did not show any
precession.

Precession of the Equinox - A Miracle of Greek Science?

Before we can understand the obstinacy on the part of some astronomers
and Egyptologists in their desire to belittle the skills and the
knowledge of the ancient Egyptian --priest-astronomers", we must first
of all know more about the discovery of another cosmic phenomenon: the
Precession of the Equinox.

The standard "Party line" is that the phenomenon of precession was
officially discovered by the Greek scholar Hipparchus, and nothing
seems to lead our contemporary astronomers to think that the ancient
Egyptians were aware of it. The trouble is that we know extremely few
details (if any at all) about the alleged discovery of precession from
Hipparchus himself. This includes some of his other major mathematical
works.

Most of the information which we actually have about Hipparchus comes
from the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy, who evidently used Hipparchus`
observations to construct his own astronomical/astrological system.
Strangely, Hipparchus did not use a consistent coordinate system to
specify stellar positions. His observations may have been accurate to
a third of a degree but apparently they were made from different
latitudes. The value of precession, which he figured was about 46" per
year, was most likely obtained through his attempts to calculate the
approximate length of the tropical year and by comparing his finding
with earlier results, presumably Babylonian parameters or astronomical
references of Chaldaean and Egyptian origin. It should be noted that
Ptolemy`s fictive value for the precession (36") differs significantly
from Hipparchus` assumptions, which were also based on a uniform
circular motion of the sphere of the fixed stars and a fixed,
non-rotating and non-orbiting Earth, since he used the wrong duration
for the tropical year.

The question is from where and how did these early observers obtain
the correct value of a sidereal year in order to determine precession;
i.e. without knowing the exact length of the tropical year or the
360-degree revolution of the --Sun around the Earth"?

6 The late astronomer Richard R. Newton notes: --...comparing the
kinds of years would not have given the Greek astronomers an accurate
value p (precession). In view of the difficulty of measuring stellar
longitudes, the most accurate method available to them was probably
the measurement of stellar declinations."

Robert R. Newton, --The Origins of Ptolemy's Astronomical Parameter",
Chapter V, --The Stars and the Precession of the Equinoxes", Center
for Archaeoastronomy, College Park, Maryland (1982)

Limited by the accuracy of the construction of the available
instruments (astrolabe), the observations and recordings depended
largely upon the adopted value of the obliquity of the ecliptic
itself, which was by no means perfectly known. But it seems
mathematical theories were more important than accurate observations.
According to Neugebauer, "The ancient astronomers rightly had greater
confidence in the accuracy of their mathematical theory than in their
instruments."

Robert R. Newton, --The Origins of Ptolemy's Astronomical Parameter",
The Role of Observation in Ancient Greek Astronomy, Center for
Archaeoastronomy, College Park, Maryland (1982)

Hipparchus' value may have been the result of such "technical" errors,
but in the case of Ptolemy his "errors in observation" were more a
problem of poor plagiarism.

Ptolemy`s own work, the Syntaxis or better known as the Almagest, a
monumental book containing a multitude of observations, catalogues and
calculations, reigned for almost 1400 years as a nearly undisputed
source for astronomical information throughout medieval Europe and
Arabia. It has certainly shaped the history of science, influencing
many great thinkers. Some modern scholars say that Ptolemy preserved
Greek astronomy and ancient observations, while others like Robert
Newton (--The Crimes of Claudius Ptolemy") are convinced that Ptolemy
--lost for us the genuine astronomy of the ancient world". Ptolemy
apparently fabricated his observations and misreports those of earlier
origin to match his own theories.

Newton concludes that, --The Syntaxis has done more damage to
astronomy than any other work ever written, and astronomy would be
better off if it had never existed. Thus Ptolemy is not the greatest
astronomer of antiquity, but he is something still more unusual: he is
the most successful fraud in the history of science."

Robert R. Newton, --The Origins of Ptolemy's Astronomical Parameter",
Center for Archaeoastronomy, College Park, Maryland (1982) Hipparchus
and Ptolemy may have been victims of the age they lived in and neither
one of them can defend themselves any longer against any allegations
of --misconduct", although some of their modern-day advocates could.
But after 2000 years of --Greek astronomy" they probably feel they
don`t have to. After all, Otto Neugebauer had made it clear for them
that the Egyptian calendar --is certainly not derived from astronomy".

And since no one can say for sure what went on in the mind of
Hipparchus, who was one of the few well- known scholars of antiquity
to have access to the Great Library of Alexandria where once more than
five hundred thousand books, scrolls, papyri and manuscripts were
kept, we will never know what he may have read about precession or
what inspired him to start his own observations to confirm it; i.e.
the motion of the sphere of the fixed stars.

--Let those who, believing in observations, cause the stars to move
around the poles of the zodiac by one degree in one hundred years
toward the east, as Ptolemy and Hipparchos did before him, know ...
that the Egyptians had already taught Plato about the movement of the
fixed stars. Because they utilized previous observations which the
Chaldeans had already made long before them with the same result,
having again been instructed by the gods prior to the observations.
And they did not speak just a single time, but many times ... of the
advance of the fixed stars. (Proclos Diadochos, Commentaries on the
Timaeus, IV)

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, --Sacred Science", Inner Traditions (1982)

7 Part 2

The Rise and Fall of the Calendar

"Sosigenes' Calendar Reform" - A Glimmer of Hope In Dark Times

By the time Ptolemy wrote his Syntaxis the world was already in
turmoil, it was the beginning of the death of Greek astronomy and
mankind was descending into a cataclysmic dark age. Around 47 BCE,
when Julius Caesar conquered Egypt, the Great Library of Alexandria
went up in flames. All recorded ancient scientific knowledge was lost
forever and real wisdom silently began to disappear from the face of
the Earth.

Neither the Greeks* nor the Romans ever had a functional calendar that
was in tune with the seasons. By the time Julius Caesar ruled over
Egypt, the old Greco-Roman lunar style calendar was off by more than
two months from the date of the equinox. What a defeat for the
"mightiest` man in the world to realize that only someone initiated in
the Hermetic Tradition of ancient Egypt would be capable to restore
the calendar to its original form.

* Apparently, around the fourth century BC the Greek Callippus had
improved the earlier Athenian calendar of Melon and Euctemon by
omitting one day every 76 years (Callippic cycle). However, his
"365.25-day calendar reform" did not survive the following centuries.

From the Roman author Gaius Plinius Secundus (a.k.a. Pliny the Elder)
we learn that "... There were three main schools, the Chaldaean, the
Egyptian, and the Greek; and to these a fourth was added in our
country by Caesar during his dictatorship, who with the assistance of
the learned astronomer Sosigenes (Sosigene perito scientiae eius
adhibito) brought the separate years back into conformity with the
course of the sun." (http://www.rxs.bigstep.com/generic.html?pid=8)

Had it not been for the great Alexandrian scholar and astronomer
Sosigenes, who was brought to Julius Caesar in 46 BCE to help him
--overhaul" the Roman calendar, there would have never been any spring
equinox occurring on March 21st in the subsequent years until roughly
300 CE oe i.e. shortly before the Fathers of the Church debated their
Easter problem due to their inadequate lunar based solar calendar.

Thus, the wise Sosigenes not just re-introduced the ancient Egyptian
solar calendar with its well-known four- year leap day cycle, but also
accounted for the secular error of one (leap) day every 128.18 solar
years. According to Hipparchus` wrong calculation of the tropical year
that error would have amounted to one day in about 300 years.

For it is remarkable that Sosigenes` tropical calendar (a.k.a. Julian
calendar) was kept accurate until approximately 300 CE, as the
knowledge of its additional leap-day was being lost again for nearly
another 1300 years!

Neither historians nor scientists can offer us any conclusive document
(like a decree or reform) which shows that the Julian calendar had in
any way been corrected by omitting three leap days over a period of
less than 400 years following "Sosigenes' reform". Given the
historical uncertainty as to which years from 43 BCE to 8 CE were
counted as leap years, it appears Modern Science would rather
attribute the accuracy of the calendar to coincidence.

As a reminder and symbol of a genuine surviving fragment of ancient
wisdom, Sosigenes began the --new year" on the 1st of January 45 BCE,
representing the first day of the month of Thoth in the tradition of
the ancient --Sirius" calendar. Our New Years Day (Silvester) is a
reflection of the age-old ritual, celebrating the return of Sirius to
the mid-heaven position at midnight, which occurs around the first of
January. Interestingly enough, for 2005 Earth's perihelion is also on
January 1st - an event which hasn't happened in centuries.

8 The accuracy of the calendar was not the result of sheer
coincidence, but the direct influence of an ever wakeful and
periodically re-emerging flow of the perennial wisdom and knowledge
coming forth throughout the ages, as in the tradition of the ancient
Hermetic school.

By around 200 CE Clement of Alexandria still made reference to a
catalogue of Egyptian Books, which contain in thirty six works the
entire philosophy of the Egyptians. Among them were --eight books
dealing with the knowledge of what are called hieroglyphics and
including cosmography, geography, the positions of the sun and moon,
the phases of the five planets, the chorography of Egypt, the charting
of the Nile and its phenomena, a description of the temples and of the
places consecrated to them and information regarding the measures of
all that is used in sacred rites. ... Four books dealing with the
stars, one regarding moving stars, the other about the conjunction of
the sun and moon, the other about their risings, confided to the
Astronomer whose symbols are a clock and a palm branch."

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, --Sacred Science", Inner Traditions (1982)

This most valuable collection of books was known to the Greeks under
the name of Hermetic Books or the Books of Thoth, as they considered
the author of these books to be the Egyptian sage Thoth oe the god of
wisdom.

The Cycle of Knowledge & The Calendar

Alas, the prosecution of individuals and esoteric groups started to
get into full swing. In 389 CE the library of Alexandria was again
destroyed by flames. Hypatia, the famous daughter of Theon of
Alexandria, who wrote some of the commentaries on Ptolemy`s Syntaxis,
embodied as a true victim of the times the end of Alexandrian science.
In 415 CE, on her way to a lecture, she was brutally murdered by a mob
of fanatic --Christian" monks, who pulled her through the streets by
her hair, peeled off her skin with seashells and hacked her to pieces
before she was burned alive. Violence and atrocities are always the
direct result of human ignorance, a severe lack of compassion and a
great loss of spiritual wisdom.

As a crucial turning point in the history of mankind`s spiritual path
of evolution, the fifth century saw further decline and chaos as the
Roman Empire collapsed, and with it came the complete disappearance of
the true knowledge of the ancient Egyptian Sothic calendar. Sirius and
his companion play a central role in the Isis & Osiris mysteries, the
sacred teachings of the ancient Egyptian culture which date back to at
least 3100 BCE. These teachings remain a well-guarded secret as only
the initiated priests had access to the --hermetic knowledge" oe i.e.
a hermetically sealed wisdom. But already with the invasion by the
Persians around 525 BCE the hermetic priests had to disappear and went
into hiding - none of the later rulers of Egypt or any of the
descendants of the Romans supported their re-appearance.

During these times people fought for pure survival and were no longer
interested in a calendar that accurately kept track of time. According
to the Yuga cycle theory of ancient India (www.thegreatyear.com), by
499 CE the intellect and state of man reached its lowest point (Kali
Yuga) in the Sun`s great cycle of about 24,000 years. It seems that
man`s state of awareness and his knowledge about the astronomical
basis of the calendar is being reflected by the perfection of the
calendar itself.

For the next thousand years or so the --civilized world" completely
forgot how to keep the calendar in tune with the seasons, despite the
fact that prehistoric monuments continue to exist in Europe (e.g.
Stonehenge in England or the Externsteine in Germany) to observe the
equinoxes and solstices. But these ancient observatories were regarded
as cult places used by heathens for the worship of their pagan Gods.
Europe was in the age of --witch hunts" and the systematic prosecution
of heretics - an age during which more than a million innocent people
were killed or burned alive at the stake.

9 Ptolemy was dead, long live Ptolemy! And he did - at least until
about 1600 CE, the year Giordano Bruno, the Hermetic philosopher, was
violently executed by the Church for his belief in an infinite
universe. But that year also marked a further transition in the cycle
of time oe a slow but renewed awakening.

After the calendar reform of 1582 CE the days of the months were now
counted in a cycle of 365.2425 days instead of 365.25 days. While the
4th of October 1582 was still the same day for both the Julian and the
so- called Gregorian calendar, the next day (October 5th Julian)
became October 15th in the Gregorian calendar. This reformation
ensured that for the next 3320 years the spring equinox will be
celebrated on March 21st, just as it occurred in the century before
the year 325 CE when the Fathers of the Church discussed their Easter
problem at the Council of Nicaea.

This implies that one could use the Gregorian or our modern civil
calendar, which is almost identical to the duration of the tropical
year, to go back and forth in time by thousands of years and the
equinoxes will remain within a day on or around March 21st and
September 21st, and the solstices on or around June 21st and December
21st.

So far so good, except that historians and astronomers still prefer to
use the Julian calendar, projected backwards, to express dates in
history as the inexact leap day system of a 365.25-day calendar avoids
some of the complexities of the modern civil calendar. Nowadays, there
are a number of computer programs available that make the conversion
between the different calendars quite easy. For instance, if we have a
June 21st 3420 BCE (Gregorian), it would correspond to the day July
19, 3421 BCE (Julian). Since the Julian calendar does not include the
year 0, the year 1 BCE is followed by the year 1 CE, which makes it
somewhat awkward for arithmetic calculations. Instead of using BCE
dates, astronomers usually write the year 1 BCE as year 0 while the
year -100 corresponds to 101 BCE, etc.

Sirius & The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian Calendar

Remember we were told that the ancient Egyptians "did not derive their
calendar from astronomy`. But they did have a calendar, and the
majority of Egyptologists have accepted the year of the calendar`s
establishment around 4200 BCE. This date is not related (at least one
would hope so) to the primitive medieval view that the world in
general began six thousand years ago. On the contrary, this date is
based on the Pyramid Texts which commenced in the year 2800 to 2600
BCE and which in an archaic style (i.e. from the beginning of the
empire) provide us with numerous references to Sirius, revealing a
profound knowledge of the heavens:

Pyr. 965: --Sothis is your beloved daughter who prepares yearly
sustenance for you in this her name of "New year`." (Pepi 189, M.355
and N. 906)

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, --Sacred Science", Inner Traditions (1982)

This implies that astronomical knowledge of the yearly motion of
Sirius and regarding the day of the --New year" in the calendar
predates the texts themselves.

Eduard Meyer, one of the earlier German Egyptologist who developed his
"Sothic theory` based for the most part on the information he found in
Ptolemy`s Almagest and on the classical evidence of Theon of
Alexandria, concluded in his work "Ägyptische Chronologie`:

--We can therefore affirm in all confidence that the Egyptian calendar
was created to reflect that condition of the seasons which is
presented to us in the year 4241 BC."

10 In the year 4241 BCE the --flooding of the Nile" occurred from July
19 to November 15 (Julian calendar), or as we know better from June 15
to October 12 according to our civil calendar. Meyer was convinced
that for the entire beginning of the empire a perfect coincidence
existed between the start of the flood season and the Sothic cycle
marked by the so-called heliacal rising of the star Sirius. In order
for his Sothic cycle to properly work, Meyer theorized that the
Egyptians never corrected their 365 day calendar with regards to the
seasons, and that all dates repeat every 1460 years. In other words,
the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius would fall successively on
each day of a "365-day" year. Any correction on the part of the
ancient Egyptians before Roman times would, of course, invalidate his
theory on the Sothic cycle.

The astronomer Richard A. Parker, who worked with Otto Neugebauer on
the Egyptian Astronomical Texts yet rejected some of his notions on
the 365 day calendar, refuted Meyer`s Sothic theory and asserted that
throughout dynastic times the Egyptians kept three calendars "two
lunar and religious, one civil", none of them based upon Sothis. He
was, however, convinced that in pre-dynastic times the first Egyptian
calendar had to be luni-stellar. Realizing that a lunar month must
begin with some observable phase of the moon, Parker was seeking for a
lunar phenomenon associated with the morning of the Egyptian day.

It is clear that such information obtained from ancient records, which
mainly depend upon classical sources, remains vague and contradictory.
Fortunately, the ancient Egyptians referred often and plainly enough
to Sirius! Thus it seems, Parker had no problem to assume that
--whatever it (the original calendar) may have been in prehistory, the
first Egyptian calendar of record was lunar, and it was based upon the
heliacal rising of the star Sothis."

R. Parker, "The Calendars of Ancient Egypt", Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization, No.26 (1950)

Since he found literary references* that primitive tribes in Mexico,
New Zealand and Africa also used constellations and stars like the
Pleiades, Orion, Rigel and Sirius to determine the beginning of the
year which they divided into lunar months, it became immediately
apparent to Parker as to why the Egyptians chose Sirius as the
starting point for their "Nile-lunar calendar".

* --Immediately after the discovery of America it was already reported
of certain tribes on the Mexican coast that they began the year at the
setting of the Pleiades and divided it into moon-months. In Loango
(West coast of Africa) the months are counted from new moons, but
Sirius, the rainy star, offers a means of correcting the reckoning
sidereally."

Nilsson, --Primitive Time-Reckoning", (Lund, 1920)

"In the winter season, the position of the Pleiades is observed to
tell time. They are first at their zenith, later a bit past it, at
sunrise. At the end of the winter season, they set when the sun rises.
After the winter season, Orion's Belt (atanu) is used for
time-keeping; the onions are sown when Orion rises at sunset."

Marcel Griaule & Germaine Dieterlen, "Le Renard Pâle",1965 - (English
Edition "The Pale Fox", Continuum Foundation, 1986)

Obviously, Parker did not hear or read anything about the West African
tribe of the Dogon and the detailed astronomical knowledge they
possess about Sirius. He and his contemporary peers could have blamed
their ignorance on a lack of information, since (according to the
imaginations of some modern experts) in the 1920s a certain Maté and
other missionaries from the 'White Fathers' decided to convey such
detailed knowledge only to the chief priests of the Dogon and not to
the rest of the scientific world.

Although Parker tinkered with the idea that a lunar calendar based on
Sirius is "either due to Egyptian influence or is a cultural survival
out of the ancient Hamitic substratum of eastern Africa, from which
Egypt drew so much", it was sufficient for him to establish the fact
that --the first Egyptian calendar need not have been the product of a
highly developed culture. It had common roots with many other
primitive calendars and must be characterized as quite normal and
unspectacular. [...] How long a period passed before the formulation
of the lunar calendar as suggested can only be guessed at."

R. Parker, "The Calendars of Ancient Egypt", Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization, No.26 (1950)

11 After explaining the food-producing lifestyle of the earliest
Egyptians in rhythm with the river Nile, Parker surmises that some
time in the fifth or fourth millennium BC the brightest star of all,
Sirius, --came to be recognized as the harbinger of the inundation."

And since no grandmother ever told us otherwise, we learned by rote
that in ancient times the highly irregular flooding of the Nile was
associated with the extremely predictable celestial motion of Sirius.
Our scholars believe - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that some 6000
years ago the position of Sirius in the sky was very different from
what it is nowadays. Sirius does move - the question is, relative to
what?

For many of the so-called primitive tribes a certain position of
Sirius in the sky in relation to the Sun has always marked the first
day of a calendar based on the seasons. Yet for the advancing Egyptian
culture the various lunar calendars governed by a 365-day agricultural
calendar moved forward through the season without ever being corrected
throughout the entire Egyptian history to the seasons or to the
important first day of the first month of the solar year. How
primitive, indeed! As cultures evolved, their knowledge of accurate
calendar time-keeping declined.

12 Part 3

Sirius and the Summer Solstice

The Effect of Precession

At this point we may rightfully ask, "What has all of this to do with
the phenomenon of Precession?" The calendar reform was not due to
precession, although a hypothetically longer solar year leads to the
same effect!

Precession is an observed celestial phenomenon that involves the
apparent motion of the stars relative to the "fixed` position of the
Equinoxes and Solstices. For the record - and one can already hear
some astronomers huffing and puffing (because they can`t prove
otherwise) - the length of the tropical year does not depend upon any
adopted value of the precession!

Unfortunately, most astronomers do not study theoretical precession
dynamics and are unfamiliar with all the required hypothetical
movements, including the motion of Sirius.

Just as the motion of the Moon serves as a witness (solar eclipse
phenomenon) for the Earth`s 360- degree orbital motion around the Sun
in a tropical year, so does Sirius.

It seems that against all of its beliefs, Modern Astronomy has
actually proven that our entire heliocentric solar system moves around
the Zodiac; not because of occult forces acting on the Earth, but
because astronomers have completely failed to demonstrate that the
Earth wobbles relative to the fixed position of an immovable Sun

Sirius & Precession

It is recognized that from the beginning of the empire and during the
entire dynastic period the rising of Sirius with the Sun always
occurred around the time of the Summer solstice. Unless the ancient
astronomers had some still unexplained means (like an underground
hollow from which special shafts opened towards the horizon in certain
directions) to directly observe Sirius in conjunction with the Sun, it
is extraordinarily hard, if not impossible, to observe Sirius in broad
daylight. And during several months before and after it enters in
conjunction with the Sun, Sirius is no longer visible at night.
Therefore, given the difficulty to locate the Summer solstice and the
exact position of Sirius relative to the Sun by naked-eye
observations, it is a truly remarkable accomplishment of the ancient
astronomers to "choose" from among all of the precessing stars this
particular star Sirius as the important and lasting marker for time.
The implication of this astronomical fact is best explained by Jed Z.
Buchwald, a distinguished Professor of History and Science, in his
paper --Egyptian Stars under Paris Skies" (Caltech, Engineering &
Science No. 4, 2003), where he discusses the meaning of the Zodiac
that has been engraved in the ceiling of the temple of Dendera in
Egypt:

--The solstice is, after all, extraordinarily hard to pin-point by
observation, and in any case it was known from Greek texts that the
Egyptians were particularly concerned with the heliacal rising of the
brightest star in the sky, Siriusthat is, with the night when Sirius
first appears, just before dawn. In Egyptian prehistory this event
certainly preceded the annual flooding of the Nile, which was of
obvious agricultural importance. Would not precession have moved
Sirius along with the zodiacal stars, eventually decoupling its
heliacal

13 rising from the solstice, and so from the annual inundation? We
know today that the inundation occurs after the June beginning of the
rainy season in Ethiopia, where the Blue Nile rises. And yet Sirius`
heliacal rising remained a central marker of the year throughout
Egyptian history." (p 25)

".... despite precession, Sirius and the solstice must remain about
the same distance in time from one another during most of Egyptian
history. Indeed they do, though it`s doubtful that Burckhardt and
Coraboeuf had thought it through. Because of Sirius` position, and the
latitudes at which the Egyptians observed the sky, both Sirius`
heliacal rising and the summer solstice remained nearly the same
number of days apart throughout Egyptian history even though the
zodiac moves slowly around the ecliptic." (pp 29)

Buchwald, who produced a revealing diagram on the "Heliacal Risings of
Sirius` in relation to the vernal points (for the period of 2900 BCE
to 2941 CE at intervals of 1460 years) using TheSky software, makes it
very clear that "Sirius remains about the same distance from the
equinoxes - and so from the solstices - throughout these many
centuries, despite precession".

In a personal correspondence with this author, Jed Buchwald also noted
that --the effect was actually first discovered long ago by Tycho
Brahe in fact, who informed the chronologer Scaliger about it."
Buchwald`s account appears to be very different from the established
notion that the phenomenon of the "Precession of the Equinox` was not
known to the ancient Egyptians - a notion which the astronomer Johann
Karl Burckhardt and the engineer Jean-Baptiste Coraboeuf of the early
18th century were not at all convinced of.

Earlier on, as we can learn from Buchwald, Charles Dupuis argued that
astronomy itself was born near the Nile over 14000 years ago. And
Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf (a.k.a. Volney) maintained that
history amounts to a succession of continually reemerging ancient
civilizations.

Again, this idea is supported by the Yuga theory of ancient India, as
expounded by Swami Sri Yukteswar in the introduction of his book --The
Holy Science" which he wrote in 1894. In fact, Sri Yukteswar advanced
the argument by asserting that the celestial phenomenon which causes
the backward movement of the equinoctial points around the zodiac is
due to the motion of our entire solar system around its dual.

Yet the assertion that Sirius plays the role of a center for the
circuit of our entire solar system has been proposed about six decades
later by the mathematician and Egyptologist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
who studied the findings of Jean-Baptiste Biot. De Lubicz remarked in
his book "Sacred Science - The King of Pharaonic Theocracy" that the
Sirius year of almost exactly 365.25 days was established according to
the heliacal rising of Sirius.

"For it is remarkable that owing to the precession of the equinoxes,
on the one hand, and the movement of Sirius on the other, the position
of the sun with respect to Sirius is displaced in the same direction,
almost exactly to the same extent."

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, --Sacred Science", Inner Traditions (1982)

14 Using The Position of Sirius - Better Than Precessional Dating?

In an attempt to --re-date" dynastic Egyptian chronology or better
said, to assign more accurate periods to the reigns of Kings and
Pharaohs, astronomers and Egyptologists have recently combined their
efforts in order to use the heliacal rising of Sirius as a --source of
dating". A special software program has been developed by Karine
Gadré, the Associate Researcher at the Department of Astrophysics of
the Midi- Pyrenees Observatory in Toulouse, France.

The original program which determines the heliacal rising for any star
taking in account the date, latitude, elevation and a number of
atmospheric variables is available from her company called CultureDiff
(www.culturediff.org). The software works mainly on the basis of
historical references and demonstrates that Sirius neither follows a
tropical year of 365.2422 days nor a sidereal year of 365.2564 days.
Evidently, the length of a Sirian year is almost exactly 365.25 days
according to the program.

Example: Given the same atmospheric conditions for Alexandria
(latitude 31,22 degrees), the heliacal rising of Sirius occurs in 1950
CE on August 5 and in 3421 BCE on July 19 (Julian Calendar) [which is
equivalent to June 21, 3420 BCE Gregorian calendar]. Hence, in some
5370 years Sirius has moved approximately 45 days away from the Summer
solstice in 3420 BCE. Of course, over the same period the stars of the
Zodiac would have moved by roughly 75 days due to the effects of
precession.

Like with other available astronomical software, the apparent motion
of the stars is programmed for the slow retrograde movement with
respect to the fixed position of the equinox or solstice in the
calendar (i.e. the rate of precession is not based on Hipparchus` or
Ptolemy`s figure or for that matter on an Egyptian agricultural year
of 365 days, but on a more modern value of 50.26" per tropical year).

According to the current theory of lunisolar precession the pole, and
therefore the equator of the Earth is suppose to --wobble" over a
period of roughly 25800 years relative to the position of the fixed
stars and the Sun. In other words, if we were to imagine the Earth
"fixed` in its revolution around the Sun at the time when Sirius is in
conjunction with the Sun (e.g. during the Summer solstice), an
observer would not only notice changes in the declination of Sirius
and the other stars, but simultaneously equal changes in the
declination of the Sun. In practice, however, Sirius does not show any
significant variations in its position relative to the Summer
solstice.

In order to account for the unusual motion of Sirius, which is minimal
relative to the Summer solstice and exceptionally high with respect to
the stars of the Zodiac, Karine Gadré offers the following
explanation:

--The low change in the celestial coordinates of Sirius comes from its
high proper movement, which partly compensated the effects of
precession under the Dynastic Period. [...] In order to better
understand how the proper movement of Sirius can partly compensate the
effects of precession, do not only take into account the numerical
values of the speed vector. Take also into account the position of
Sirius on the celestial vault at a given instant and the direction of
the speed vector."

Now we know that the proper motion of Sirius (i.e. of the Sirius
system) over a period of some 5400 years is less than 2°:

"For a long time astronomers had been noticing anomalies in Sirius'
proper motion; this motion, well known since Halley's time is equal to
0.0375" in RA (Right Ascension) and to 1.207" in D, (Declination),
which gives a yearly resultant motion of 1.32" in the direction of
204°, which is noticeably to the south. In 1834, Bessel showed that
the anomalies consisted mainly of deviations between the star's
theoretical position and its actual position; these distinctly
periodic differences, especially in right ascension, may be as great
as 0.321", which is a considerable amount with regard to meridian
observations. Overall, instead of moving through space in a straight
line, Sirius appears to display a wavy trajectory."

Dr. P. Blaize, Le Compagnon de Sirius, Bull. de la Société
astronomique de France (1931)

15 Modern astronomical references indicate that the proper motion of
Sirius ranges from RA: -0.038 to -0.553 arcsec/a, whereas values for
the Declination are given anywhere from 0 to -1.205 arsec/a.

Such data hardly --compensates" for a precession in the longitude of
more than 50" per year!

In terms of sidereal transit time measurement, the mean sidereal
rotation period of the Earth with respect to the fixed stars is said
to be about 86164.101 seconds, whereas the mean sidereal day relative
to the position of the vernal equinox is 86164.09054 seconds.
According to the --historical data" of Sirius based on observations of
its heliacal rising, it appears that a sidereal day, as measured with
respect to Sirius (i.e. its mean transit period), is approximately
86164.095 seconds.

A similar value of the mean transit period of Sirius (86164.09281 s),
which in reality is closer to a tropical day of 86164.091 seconds, has
been confirmed by Karl-Heinz Homann as part of his long-term
observations of Sirius during a period of more than six years from
1994 to 2000. His observations of Sirius began in 1989 and continue to
the present day, furthermore confirming the astronomical fact that
Sirius does not show any precession. The minimal motion of Sirius
relative to the Summer solstice, for example, cannot be explained by
conventional luni-solar precession dynamics, general precession
variations or the geometric relationship between the precession cycle
and the declination of a star.

In other words, if Sirius is not our Sun`s dual it would have to
behave like any other star and its mean transit period could not be
equal or close to equinoctial time.

Over a period of six years Sirius should have changed its position by
6 þ 1223 seconds (i.e. more than 2 hours), which is said to be the
time difference between the tropical year and the moment our Earth
crosses the imaginary conjunction line between Sun and Sirius.
However, the observations have shown that after six years of continued
measurement Sirius crossed the meridian only 5 seconds later than
tropical time, instead of 9.12 ms/day or 3.34 s annually (6 þ 3.34 s =
approx. 20 seconds).

According to the latest VLBI data (International Earth Rotation
Service) and the current astronomical understanding of precession
(i.e. lunisolar --wobble"), the conventional duration of Earth`s
inertial spin period is 86164.09890369732 seconds regardless of
precession.

http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/models/constants.html#rotation

If that assumption were to be true, the mean transit period of Sirius
can not be several milliseconds shorter in duration each sidereal day,
than Earth's mean rotation period relative to inertial space!

16 Part 4

The Sun Behind The Sun

A Special Day In Egypt's Remote Past

Richard Parker provides us with some information on the meaning of the
first day of the first month (Thoth) of the Sothic year, called wp
rnpt or later prt Spdt. By citing various classical sources, he
suggests that --the primary meaning of wp rnpt was the helical rising
of Sothis", and believes that from the Middle Kingdom on it meant the
first day of the 365-day civil calendar.

--It cannot, I believe, be sheer coincidence that the Middle Kingdom
was the time when the term prt Spdt first appeared and when wp rnpt
came to mean the first day of the civil year. The explanation is to be
found, as I can see it, in the transfer of wp rnpt from its original
special application. As --Opener of the Year" it would mean the
heliacal rising of Sothis, assuming a lunar year based on Sothis.
Thus, as a specific day, it did control, or open, the lunar year.
When, however, the civil year had been developed, there came a time,
the Middle Kingdom by all the evidence, when the first day of that
year, the day which literally --opened" it, also came to be called wp
rnpt. Here the emphasis was on the day itself, not on any astronomical
event which took place on it. Since by then the civil year had
supplanted the lunar year in the life of the people, wp rnpt as the
rising of Sothis was of interest mainly to the priests and the
temples, and another term, prt Spdt, --the going-forth of Sothis",
purely descriptive of the event, was adopted to name the feat in the
civil calendar." ...."Wp rnpt was the rising of Sothis, the event
which opened the new year but which, in itself, did not form part of
it."

R. Parker, "The Calendars of Ancient Egypt", Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization, No.26 (1950)

Variants of that name include meanings like --The going-forth of
Horus", --the birth of Re", "the coming forth into Day" and even --the
day of the creation of the universe".

--According to Porphyry (de antro nympharum 24), "for the Egyptians
the beginning of the year is not Aquarius, as for the Romans, but
Cancer. For near Cancer is Sothis, which the Greeks call the dog-star.
Their new moon is the rising of Sothis, which is the beginning of
generation in the world`; and Solinus (Polyhistor 32. 12-13) states
that "this time (the rising of Sirius) the priests have decided to be
the birthday of the world, that is the time between the 13th and 11th
day before the Kalends of August (July 20 oe22)*.` "

* [around July 4th Gregorian]

R. Parker, "The Calendars of Ancient Egypt", Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization, No.26 (1950)

In the "Decree of Canopus" (238 BCE) we can still find a subtle
reference to the ancient tradition: --On the day of the going-forth of
Sothis, called wp rnpt in name in the writings of the House of Life."

17 The Same Day Nowadays

For the purpose of accurately dating the entire period of Dynastic
Egypt, astronomers and Egyptologist rely primarily on three recordings
of the presumed "heliacal rising of Sirius`, which according to some
astronomers required many successive observations but no calculations:

"The oldest of the three recordings of the heliacal rising of Sirius
in terms of civil dates is based on an entry from a temple register
from El-Lâhûn":

"Year 7 [of the reign of Sesostris ?], [Month] III [of Season] Peret,
Day 25 ... The Prince and Overseer of the Temple Nebkaure has said to
the Chief Lector Priest Pepyhotep : "You should know that the Going
Forth (i.e., the heliacal rising) of Sothis takes place on [Month] IV
[of Season] Peret, Day 16... You might wish to inform (?) the
lay-priests of the Temple of the city called "Mighty is Sesostris the
Justified" and [of the Temple] of Anubis and of [that of] the
Crocodile-god... And let this letter be produced for the announcement-
board of the temple."

Karine Gadré, CultureDiff, Dossier on "The heliacal rising of Sirius:
a source of dating", chapter "The heliacal rising of Sirius under the
reign of Sesostris? (1/3)"

Obviously, this ancient text (as well as others according to Schwaller
de Lubicz) makes reference to the "Going Forth" of Sothis, confirming
that such a specific day was calculated and announced in advance (even
for different temples regardless of terrestrial latitudes) rather than
an observer waiting for the actual astronomical event to take place in
relation to the annual flooding.

Egyptologists are more concerned as to when and where some king
--Sesostris" I, II or III reigned. As long as the date found on a
papyrus from some temple matches with the particular ruler of the
given period, the otherwise irrefutable chronology of Egypt`s dynastic
decline reflected by a continuous "monarchy replacement" remains
intact for future generations to memorize.

Astronomers, however, using the method of back-dating cannot afford to
be so vague about astronomical dates. If they wish to take into
account the chronological divergences of centuries on the basis of a
365.25 day interval of the heliacal rising of Sirius and claim* that
the [Month] IV [of season] Peret, Day 16 somehow corresponds to either
June 29th 1800 BCE or August 18th 2000 BCE, then we need to ask why
there is a difference of 50 days in just 200 years?

* --In 2000 BC, IV Peret 16 coincided with August, the 18th; in 1800
BC, with June, the 29th." (K. Gadré, --The heliacal rising of Sirius:
a source of dating")

Of course, by going back in time and converting these dates to our
modern civil calendar we arrive at June 14th and August 1st
respectively. According to Neugebauer's suppositions regarding ancient
Egyptian astronomy, the priests based their reckoning of time on the
irregular flooding of the Nile and an agricultural year of exactly 365
days. Thus we are led to believe that the day provided by the ancient
text (the 16th day of the eights month of the year) could corresponded
to any possible day in a 365-day calendar with respect to the Summer
solstice, or the more easily observable equinoxes. That is the reason
for the above noted 50 day difference in 200 years (200 þ the missing
³ day every four years).

But do we really want to assume that the ancient Egyptian priests
failed to realize that around 2000 BCE their own calendar date was off
by nearly three weeks with respect to the solstice and more
importantly with respect to the predicted heliacal rising of Sirius?

18 Hipparchus and Ptolemy relied on imprecise drawings of stars in the
sky, an inaccurate tropical year and only a few years of personal
observations, but the ancient Egyptians, who successively observed
Sirius and other stars for several thousands of years, had supposedly
no clue that these stars in relation to the position of Sirius, and
their calendar in relation to the Summer solstice or the seasons,
would have drifted noticeably apart in a period of already less than a
hundred years. It almost sounds as if Mother Nature never offered the
people of Egypt (unlike the Mayan) any other signs and means besides
an irregular inundation of the Nile and variable lunar months to
correct the calendaric situation.

Who can really say whether the enlightened Hermetic priests at
Dendera, Heliopolis and other temples across Egypt would have felt
pressed at all to express themselves in alignment with any ceremonial
--state" calendar?

Knowledge of a systematic motion of Sirius in the celestial sphere and
in relation to the seasons can only be the result of profound wisdom
and/or many centuries of careful observations carried out with
mathematical exactitude.

Let's not forget that the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians solved
quadratic equations in order to construct the Great Pyramid; a design
that is based beyond any reasonable doubt on the harmonic
Phi-relation, given the mathematical fact that the surface area of
each face of the pyramid is exactly equal to the square of its height.

19 Conclusion

Nowadays, Earth's aphelion is on or around July 4th, which is also the
time when Sun and Sirius are in conjunction. For the ancient priests
the day of the "Going Forth" or "Shining Forth" of Sirius represented
the day of the "New Year", and therefore the beginning of the calendar
marked by the position of Sirius relative to the Sun.

So when astronomers assert that the "Going Forth" of Sirius took place
shortly after the time of the Summer solstice (i.e. projected
backwards to around July 18th to 20th Julian or July 2nd to 4th
Gregorian), then we must seriously question the assumption that the
astronomically precise Sirius or Sothic year would be equal to a
Julian year of 365.25 days.

It would be much more reasonable to conclude that the length of a
sidereal year as measured with respect to Sirius is nearly identical
to the equinoctial or tropical year of our Earth.

As a final thought, we would like to leave the reader with a wise
observation by one of India`s greatest sages, Swami Sri Yukteswar, for
it takes vision and courage to clearly see and rectify our mistakes.

--...we may observe that the different planets, exercising their
influence over the various days of the week, have lent their names to
their respective days; similarly, the different constellations of
stars, having influence over various months, have lent their names to
the Hindu months. Each of the great Yugas has much influence over the
time covered by it; hence, in designating the years it is desirable
that such terms should indicate to which Yuga they belong. As the
Yugas are calculated from the position of the equinox, the method of
numbering the years in reference to their respective Yuga is based on
scientific principle; its use will obviate much inconvenience which
has arisen in the past owing to association of the various eras with
persons of eminence rather than with celestial phenomena of the fixed
stars."

Swami Sri Yukteswar, --The Holy Science", 1894

In that sense, and in the tradition of the hermetic wisdom of an
ancient and pre-dynastic Egypt, may the "Truth Come Forth Into Day"!

© The Sirius Research Group December 2004