Letters
                                       

  Ninsianna observations: a correction
  
   Some two decades ago, I concluded that the positions of the equinoxes
   implied in the Ninsianna document meant that the orbital eccentricity
   of Earth was around 0.1. This conclusion grew out of joint work with
   Raymond C. Vaughan but was entirely of my doing and was never endorsed
   by Vaughan.

   The main evidence for the 0.1 was the transition point located between
   VIII 5 and VIII 10. That transition is real, as is clearly indicated
   by Years 7 and 15, which are longer superior conjunction
   invisibilities ending on VIII 2 and VIII 5, respectively, and by Years
   2 and 10, which are shorter superior conjunction invisibilities
   beginning on VIII 11 and VIII 10, respectively. (See our
   reconstruction of the original readings on the various Ninsianna
   tablets in our joint article, 'Section II: The Artificial Insertion',
   Kronos V:4 (Summer, 1980), pp. 35, 39, and 47.)

   My mistake here was in thinking that this transition from longer to
   shorter invisibilities indicated the location of the mean autumnal
   equinox. With the mean vernal equinox in I, we would then supposedly
   get a ratio of about 6m21 d to 5m9d - reflective of high eccentricity,
   something around 0.1! That the autumnal equinox situation is the cause
   of the transition is clear - but does the transition itself show the
   location of the autumnal equinox? At the time, and until just
   recently, I thought that it did and that our findings thus entailed
   the 0.1. Indeed, I thought that the 0.1 was a direct consequence of
   our findings and that it was in that sense part of our findings.
   However none of this really follows. The 0.1 was not part of our
   findings and what I saw as a 'direct consequence' of our findings is
   actually a non sequitur.

   I now realise that what the transition point actually indicates is the
   mid-point of one side of the Venus 'pentagon' (see our joint article,
   'Analysis of the Babylonian Observations of Venus', Kronos 11:2 (Fall,
   1976), pp. 15-17). All that we can say is that the autumnal equinox is
   somewhere around that transition point. However it could easily be a
   month or more away from it, for even when Venus was a month or more
   away from the autumnal equinox, the steep slope of the ecliptic in the
   east would still be there and the shallow slope of the ecliptic in the
   west would still be there. (Venus would still be 'on the path of Anu',
   as the mulAPIN puts it, i.e. closer to an equinox than to a solstice.)
   At least on this basis, the mean equinoxes could easily be in, say,
   VII and I and the eccentricity could be minimal.

   Unfortunately, I have already defended the 0.1 in print - see my
   'Answers to Further Critics', Kronos XI:3 (Summer, 1986), pp. 64-70
   and 'Current Issues in Catastrophism', Proceedings of the Immanuel
   Velikovsky Centennial Celebration 1895-1995: Selected Papers, Ivey
   Press Books, Forest Hills, NY, 1997, p. 96. I did this entirely on my
   own; Vaughan was not the co-author of those papers and is not
   responsible for my mistake! The reconstruction of the original text
   was indeed joint work, published in our joint article, and was the
   basis for my conclusion about the 0.1, but that conclusion was arrived
   at by me alone and was published only in those two articles of mine.

   The invalidity of the argument that I had used for the 0.1 does not,
   in itself, mean that the 0.1 is wrong, nor does it mean that any other
   argument for the 0.1 is wrong. It is only my own 'proof' for it that
   is wrong. It remains to be seen whether the 0.1 itself is wrong.
   Presumably it is but that will have to be decided on other grounds and
   in some other context.

   Lynn E. Rose, Solana Beach, California

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