584
54 We could infer that the Lady of Heaven in form of Venus ideally should rule in a long synodic cycle of 40 years. 40 * 365 = 25 * 584 = 14600 Or rather, during 80 half-years (misseri): 80 * 182½ = 50 * 292 = 2 * 7300
... In north Asia the common mode of reckoning is in half-year, which are not to be regarded as such but form each one separately the highest unit of time: our informants term them 'winter year' and 'summer year'. Among the Tunguses the former comprises 6½ months, the latter 5, but the year is said to have 13 months; in Kamchatka each contains six months, the winter year beginning in November, the summer year in May; the Gilyaks on the other hand give five months to summer and seven to winter. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks reckon and name only the seven winter months, and not the summer months. This mode of reckoning seems to be a peculiarity of the far north: the Icelanders reckoned in misseri, half-years, not in whole years, and the rune-staves divide the year into a summer and a winter half, beginning on April 14 and October 14 respectively. But in Germany too, when it was desired to denote the whole year, the combined phrase 'winter and summer' was employed, or else equivalent concrete expressions such as 'in bareness and in leaf', 'in straw and in grass' ... For day 273 was the last day in September and 365 - 273 = 92 (APRIL 2):
Mythic numbers had to fit in with the background (cosmos). Otherwise they could not be integrated in the Long Sand-bank of Memory. ... Most ingenious Thoth, said the god and king Thamus, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise ...
We have here evidently discovered another 'pinpoint fraction', viz. 0.7:
And the star denoted λ Eridani was very close to Rigel (*78.1):
And on side a of the G tablet the background was surely that of the Age of the Golden Calf.
Although the 'Eye' in Taurus, the star Ain, rising with the Sun at the horizon in the east in May 25 (*65) had also the right ascension fraction 0.7. With Cursa arriving in APRIL 2 (92 → 2 * 46), i.e.11 days later. Here all our 3 fractions would come together, as if in a night of all their synodic circuits (hearts): ε Leporis (76.0) CURSA = β Eridani (76.4) λ Eridani (76.7)
... In the inscriptions of Dendera, published by Dümichen, the goddess Hathor is called 'lady of every joy'. For once, Dümichen adds: Literally ... 'the lady of every heart circuit'. This is not to say that the Egyptians had discovered the circulation of the blood. But the determinative sign for 'heart' often figures as the plumb bob at the end of a plumb line coming from a well-known astronomical or surveying device, the merkhet. Evidently, 'heart' is something very specific, as it were the 'center of gravity' ... See Aeg.Wb. 2, pp. 55f. for sign of the heart (ib) as expressing generally 'the middle, the center'. And this may lead in quite another direction. The Arabs preserved a name for Canopus - besides calling the star Kalb at-tai-man ('heart of the south') ... Suhail el-wezn, 'Canopus Ponderosus', the heavy-weighing Canopus, a name promptly declared meaningless by the experts, but which could well have belonged to an archaic system in which Canopus was the weight at the end of the plumb line, as befitted its important position as a heavy star at the South Pole of the 'waters below'. Here is a chain of inferences which might or might not be valid, but it is allowable to test it, and no inference at all would come from the 'lady of every joy'. The line seems to state that Hathor (= Hat Hor, 'House of Horus') 'rules' the revolution of a specific celestial body - whether or not Canopus is alluded to - or, if we can trust the translation 'every', the revolution of all celestial bodies. As concerns the identity of the ruling lady, the greater possibility speaks for Sirius, but Venus cannot be excluded; in Mexico, too, Venus is called 'heart of the earth'. The reader is invited to imagine for himself what many thousands of such pseudo-primitive or poetic interpretations must lead to: a disfigured interpretation of Egyptian intellectual life ... 92 (APRIL 2) = 292 (OCTOBER 19) - 400 / 2. And 400 - 360 = 40. ... The Sacred Book of the ancient Maya Quiche, the famous Popol Vuh (the Book of Counsel) tells of Zipacna, son of Vucub-Caquix (= Seven Arata). He sees 400 youths dragging a huge log that they want as a ridgepole for their house. Zipacna alone carries the tree without effort to the spot where a hole has been dug for the post to support the ridgepole. The youths, jealous and afraid, try to kill Zipacna by crushing him in the hole, but he escapes and brings down the house on their heads. They are removed to the sky, in a 'group', and the Pleiades are called after them ... 400 seems here to correspond to the day when the Sun reached the south pole star Dramasa (*320.0), i.e. in DECEMBER 2.(336) = February 4 (400 = 336 + 64):
DECEMBER 2 (336) + 84 (MARCH 25) = 420 = 7 * 60 = 6 * 70.
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