mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Maverick Science The Saturn Theory Venus Mars Myth Archaeoastronomy Evolution History BuiltByNOF Retrocalculations Reconstructing ancient chronology can be a tricky business. The ancient historical documents themselves provide fragmentary and sometimes conflicting testimony, including errors of transmission and occasional instances of intentional forgery. Ancient cultures employed a variety of calendars to record their day-to-day activities making it difficult to correlate the calendars of one culture with another, to say nothing of correlating ancient calendars with modern calendrical systems. Correlating the information derived from radiocarbon dating, bristlecone pine dating, and the ice cores has proved to be something less than an exact science, thereby limiting their use for constructing an absolute chronology. How, then, can we arrive at a secure means for dating a particular king or civilization? For the purposes of illustration, let's consider the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most famous kings of all antiquity, singled out in the Old Testament for his cruelty and for leading the Jews away into captivity (II Kings 25:1-21). Nebuchadnezzar's relative place in history is securely attested by the numerous documents that have come down to us from this period. The so-called canon of Ptolemy, for example, provides a complete list of kings from the time of Nabonassar (746 BCE) to Antonius Pius (138-161 AD). There Nebuchadnezzar appears as the 16th king of Babylon after Nabonassar. As various scholars have documented, the accuracy of Ptolemy's canon can be confirmed at every step and in great detail. In a masterful summary of the available evidence, Carl Olaf Jonsson showed that a variety of king lists, chronicles, economic transactions, and astronomical documents from ancient Babylon and elsewhere all serve to confirm the reign-lengths of the kings from Nebuchadnezzar's time until the time of Alexander the Great (see C. O. Jonsson, "The Foundations of the Assyro-Babylonian Chronology," Chronology and Catastrophism Review 9, pp. 14-23). Thus, the Uruk king list, various business documents, and Berossus all agree with Ptolemy that Nebuchadnezzar reigned for a period of 43 years (See Jonsson's argument). Most interesting, perhaps, is a stele written by Nabonidus' mother, the latter being a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar's, which likewise credits the Neo-Babylonian king with a reign of 43 years. In short, working strictly from the abundant historical documents from the Neo-Babylonian and succeeding periods, it is possible to count backwards from the time of Alexander the Great (330 BCE) to the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Employing such methods, historians have dated this king to 604-561 BCE (see also R. Parker and W. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology, 1956, p. 12 where various ancient documents are listed which serve to date the beginning and ending of Nebuchadnezzar's reign). But how can we be certain that Nebuchadnezzar truly lived 2600 years before present? Would not errors and discrepancies in the chronology of subsequent periods, such as the Dark Ages of Europe during the Middle Ages, conspire to displace the Babylonian king in time? It is here that astronomical retrocalculations, properly employed, can be a powerful tool in reconstructing the fundamental benchmarks of ancient chronology. In order to obtain reliable retrocalculations, it is necessary to have accurate celestial observations from a given place and time together with the means to compute the positions of the respective celestial bodies at specific times and longitudes. We have an abundance of accurate astronomical observations from the time of Tycho Brahe onwards, for example, so it is a relatively easy matter to feed the corresponding celestial details into a high-powered computer and retrocalculate a map of the skies from 1576 to 1601 AD, the period of Tycho's observations. Upon performing this analysis, modern astronomers have confirmed that the retrocalculated sky agrees exactly with the Dane's observations. Consider, for example, the following report of Kepler from 1590: "With regard to Venus and Mars...On 3 October at 5 am Mars was totally occulted by Venus, with the white colour of Venus indicating that Venus was lower." (Quoted from F. Stephenson & D. Clark, Applications of Early Astronomical Records, 1978, p. 15). Using a software program known as Skychart III, which allows for very accurate astronomical retrocalculations at a given time and place, I attempted to test Kepler's report. Setting the program to October 3, 1590, I obtained the following view of the sky (click here for a chart of the skies. N.B. It may be necessary to scroll to the right to see the relevant celestial bodies). It can be seen at once that Venus and Mars are so close together as to be virtually indistinguishable, a striking confirmation of Kepler's report. It follows from this test that the fundamental order of the solar system has not changed since the time of Johannes Kepler and that his place in history can be securely (and absolutely) dated to 1590 AD. In principle it should be possible to apply the same scientific methodology to more ancient astronomical reports. As it turns out, there are hundreds of astronomical diaries from ancient Babylon which have been recovered from various digs (over 1200, in fact), some of which include detailed astronomical observations that provide a map of how the skies looked during that period. The Babylonian diaries typically record the locations of the sun, moon, and respective planets against the celestial backdrop (the so-called normal stars along the ecliptic) over a period of six months or so. The oldest diary still extant dates to -651 (note that this date is astronomical dating convention, with 652 BCE being the historical dating convention), although the practice of organizing diaries is thought have originated during the time of Nabonassar (746 to 732 BCE). The latter opinion, in part, is based on Ptolemy's statement that from Nabonassar "and on the old observations have been preserved, in the large, until the present day." (Almagest 3:7) The importance of these diaries for the history of astronomy can hardly be overestimated. Not only did they serve as the observational basis for all subsequent Babylonian astronomy, they likely formed the source of the eclipse and planetary compilations assembled by Hipparchus (see the discussion in G. Toomer, "Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy," in E. Leichty ed., A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, 1988, p. 359; F. Rochberg-Halton, "Babylonian Astronomical Diaries," Journal of the American Oriental Society 111.2, 1991, pp. 323-332) A leading historian of astronomy offered the following observation: "The Diaries occupy a unique position among documents of relevance to the study of ancient history. The ever presence of the swiftly moving Moon enables us to date the texts, if we can date them at all, to the very day, and in sheer bulk, continuity, and detail and kind of information they are unmatched." (A. Aaboe, "Observation and Theory in Babylonian Astronomy," Centaurus 24, 1980, p. 24.) For our purposes here, let's consider a diary from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The following are some of the relevant observations from the document known as VT 4956: "Year 37 of Nebukadnezar, king of Babylon. Month I, (the first of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became visible behind the Bull of Heaven;Saturn was in front of the Swallow[The 11th] or 12th, Jupiter's acronychal risingMonth IISaturn was in front of the Swallow; Mercury, which had set, was not yet visibleThe 3rd, Mars entered Praesepe. The 5th, it went out (of it)The 18th, Venus was balanced 1 cubit four fingers above a LeonisMonth III, (the 1st of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became visible behind CancerAt that time, Mars and Mercury were 4 cubits in front of a [Leonis] Mercury passed below Mars to the East; Jupiter was above a Scorpii; Venus was in the west opposite Z LeonisMonth XI, (the 1st of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became visible in the Swallow; At that time, Jupiter was 1 cubit behind the elbow of SagittariusThe 4th, Venus was balanced 1/2 cubit below CapricornMonth XII, (the 1st of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became visible behind Aries while the sun stood thereAround the 20th, Venus and Mercury entered the 'band' of the Swallow." (H. Hunger, pp. 47-51) It can be seen at once that these astronomical observations are sufficiently detailed that modern astronomers can reconstruct the positions of the respective planets against the background stars with some precision. Most important, however, is the fact that this particular arrangement of the planets and stars will not repeat itself for many millennia, if ever (this is because the celestial backdrop is always changing due to the rotation of the earth and precession of the equinoxes). It follows that the specific order of the heavens recorded by the astronomer of Nebuchadnezzar's time can serve as a precise benchmark for that king's place in history. All the modern astronomer has to do is program his computer to find the year in which the various planets are aligned in the specific order prescribed by Nebuchadnezzar's diary. As I understand it, this retrocalculation has already been performed by various astronomers. According to Hermann Hunger and Abraham Sachs, the observations from this tablet describe the celestial situation pertaining from 567 March 23/24 to April 11/12 566. (A. Sachs & H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia," Vol. I, 1988, p. 52). It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is the very date historians had long assigned to Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year upon the basis of his place in Ptolemy's canon and other ancient documents. In an attempt to test the claims of Hunger and Sachs, I turned to Skychart III, setting the date to March 23rd, -567 at Babylon. The results were striking (click here for the skymap). As can be seen, Saturn is located in the general vicinity of Pisces, the Swallow of the ancient Babylonians (the Swallow was actually composed of a portion of Pisces together with epsilon Pegasi). Eleven months later, according to Nebuchadnezzar's diary, Jupiter stood within one cubit of Sagittarius while Venus stood just below Capricorn. Setting Skychart forward by eleven months, we obtain the following skymap (click here). As can be seen, Jupiter stands very close to Sagittarius while Venus stands below Capricorn. This test constitutes a dramatic confirmation of the accuracy of the astronomer's observations from Nebuchadnezzar's time. It also serves to precisely date Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year as -567. The astronomical diaries published by Hunger and others cover the period from 652 BCE to 150 BCE, so it is possible to date other kings by following the same strategy. Alexander the Great, Artaxerxes I and various other kings are mentioned in these diaries. A diary (BM. 36761) mentioning Alexander the Great's triumphant entry into Babylon retrocalculates to 330 BC, the very time period historians had previously assigned this great conqueror (see the discussion in A. Sachs & H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, Vol. 1, 1988, pp. 176-179). To summarize our conclusions to this point: Astronomical retrocalculations provide a ready means of securing an absolute date for a particular king or civilization should sufficiently accurate astronomical information be available. If the celestial order described by Nebuchadnezzar's royal astronomers is unique to that periodand it isthe odds are literally astronomical that astronomers' computer-aided retrocalculations would produce the very date (-567 BCE) otherwise assigned this ruler by historians working solely with the historical records. Even more improbable are the odds that the respective reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Artaxerxes I, Alexander the Great and various other kings mentioned in these documents would likewise conform with the very order and dates deduced by historians. Impossible in fact. It is important here to underscore the formidable problem such retrocalculations pose for theorists like Heinsohn, Illig, and Fomenko, who would shuffle the ancient dynasties like a pack of cards. Heinsohn, for example, would seek to downdate Nebuchadnezzar to the Persian period; e.g., sometime after Darius the Great! Indeed, Heinsohn would identify Nebuchadnezzar with Artaxerxes I. Yet, as we have seen, the latter king is also mentioned in the Babylonian astronomical diaries and the sky described in those textsand the retrocalculated dates, needless to saycan by no means be brought into accord with the sky described by Nebuchadnezzar's diaries. It follows, as sure as night follows day, that Heinsohn's identification of Nebuchadnezzar and Artaxerxes I is impossible. [Maverick Science] [The Saturn Theory] [Venus] [Mars] [Myth] [Archaeoastronomy] [Evolution] [History]