Algol As Horus in the Cairo Calendar: the Possible Means and the Motives of the Observations
Open Astron. 2018; 27: 232–263 Research Article Sebastian Porceddu*, Lauri Jetsu, Tapio Markkanen, Joonas Lyytinen, Perttu Kajatkari, Jyri Lehtinen, and Jaana Toivari-Viitala Algol as Horus in the Cairo Calendar: the possible means and the motives of the observations https://doi.org/10.1515/astro-2018-0033 Received Feb 15, 2018; accepted May 04, 2018 Abstract: An ancient Egyptian Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days, the Cairo Calendar (CC), assigns luck with the period of 2.850 days. Previous astronomical, astrophysical and statistical analyses of CC support the idea that this was the period of the eclipsing binary Algol three millennia ago. However, next to nothing is known about who recorded Algol’s period into CC and especially how. Here, we show that the ancient Egyptian scribes had the possible means and the motives for such astronomical observations. Their principles of describing celestial phenomena as activity of gods reveal why Algol received the title of Horus Keywords: Algol, Horus, ancient Egyptian Astronomy, variable stars, the Cairo Calendar, hemerologies 1 Introduction ies (Porceddu et al., 2008; Jetsu et al., 2013; Jetsu and Porceddu, 2015), we use only the best preserved continuous calendar which is found on pages recto III-XXX and verso The ancient Egyptian texts known as the Calendars of I-IX of papyrus Cairo 86637.The other texts and fragments Lucky and Unlucky Days, or hemerologies, are literary contained in the same papyrus are ignored from this analy- works that assign prognoses to each day of the Egyp- sis because the connection of these fragments to the main tian year (Wells, 2001a, p117-118), (Leitz, 1994, p1-2) (Bacs, calendar is not apparent and we do not know what year 1990, p41-45) (Troy, 1989, p127-147) and (Helck et al., 1975– they describe, so combining any data points from these 1992, p156).
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