Once again. Rain was like sweet tear drops from heaven, something necessary for things to grow. ... Certain Polynesian customs can more easily be understood by us if they are seen as a straight reversal of things we do ourselves. The Maori custom of weeping over friends or relatives when they return, rather than when they go away, is one example, which has a logic not impossible to grasp ...
... Why should a calendar continue up to day number 420? The idea evidently was once current also in Egypt: ... They tightly swathed the broken body in linen bandages, and when they performed over it the rites that thereafter were to be continued in Egypt in the ceremonial burial of kings, Isis fanned the corpse with her wings and Osiris revived, to become the ruler of the dead. He now sits majestically in the underworld, in the Hall of the Two Truths, assisted by forty-two assessors, one from each of the principal districts of Egypt; and there he judges the souls of the dead ... (Joseph Campbell The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology.) We can notice how manu rere (the living spirit) in the Egyptian version is generated from the wings of Isis. Feathers symbolized air and from air the step is short to breath, presumably the proof of how the spirit had reentered the body of Osiris. In the following picture (from Wilkinson) it is evident that the 42 assessors in the Hall of Two Truths were divided in 2 groups with 21 judges in each:
I believe the reason was, at least partly (there is no simple cause and effect in myth), due to a wish to coordinate the cycles of Sun and Moon. If we count with 28 days in a month, then it is possible to reach 13 * 28 = 364 in order to accomplish a fairly good approximation between a single cycle of Sun and 13 cycles of Moon. But the dark nights in the months have not been counted. The cycle of Sun can easily be depicted in the form of a 'star' with 6 flames, each one representing 60 days, and with the central hexagon approximating a circle (cycle):
Probably 60 was once used as a basic measure rather than 30 because lunar months were counted in pairs (to avoid the odd 29.5). 6 solar double-months would give rise to a year with 360 days, which did not compare well with 13 * 28 = 364 days but had the advantage of twice 360° as the sum of the internal angles of the hexagon. Half of them could be imagined as 'belonging' north of the equator and the other half south of the equator - like two separate worlds which were alternatingly 'occupied' by Sun (as if they were his two separate women). If the cycle of Moon basically is counted in weeks (by the planets in the night) then it is possible to imagine 10 weeks as a suitable measure for Sun. Thus 10 * 7 = 70 could represent a part of the path of Sun according to 'Moon counting'. 420 = 6 * 70 would come in handy, expressing '6 flames of Moon'. And 210 = 3 * 70 would be half the cycle necessary for Sun to reach Moon. 420 is the perfect number for joining Sun and Moon, and 420 is also equal to 7 * 60, indicating a calendar should continue up to '7 flames of Sun'. 420 contains 15 months à 28 nights ... At the time of the Gate of the Goat the leading star in the Pleiades, Alcyone, rose with the Sun 19 days before 0h. From the Virgin star (Adara, ε Canis Majoris) up to and including τ Aquilae there were 200 days.
At the time of the Gate of the Goat τ Aquilae (according to Hevelius in front of β where the neck of the Eagle was narrow) rose 228 days after 0h, which was 117 (= 13 * 9) days before Tau-Ono. 19 + 228 + 117 = 364 (and 118 = 4 * 29½). ... In late September or early October 130, Hadrian and his entourage, among them Antinous, assembled at Heliopolis to set sail upstream as part of a flotilla along the River Nile. The retinue included officials, the Prefect, army and naval commanders, as well as literary and scholarly figures. Possibly also joining them was Lucius Ceionius Commodus, a young aristocrat whom Antinous might have deemed a rival to Hadrian's affections. On their journey up the Nile, they stopped at Hermopolis Magna, the primary shrine to the god Thoth. It was shortly after this, in October [in the year A.D.] 130 - around the time of the festival of Osiris - that Antinous fell into the river and died, probably from drowning. Hadrian publicly announced his death, with gossip soon spreading throughout the Empire that Antinous had been intentionally killed. The nature of Antinous's death remains a mystery to this day, and it is possible that Hadrian himself never knew; however, various hypotheses have been put forward ... Gregory XIII ought to have appreciated a position of the Virgin star (Adara) at the beginning of the halfyear before the birth of Christ.
And this might have influenced him when he changed the ancient correlations between the positions of the important stars and the days in his new calendar. ... Gregory dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronisation with the seasons. Accordingly, when the new calendar was put in use, the error accumulated in the 13 centuries since the Council of Nicaea [325 A.D.] was corrected by a deletion of ten days. The Julian calendar day Thursday, 4 October 1582 was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582 (the cycle of weekdays was not affected) ... So the shift in the date of the equinox that occurred between the 4th and the 16th centuries was annulled with the Gregorian calendar, but nothing was done for the first four centuries of the Julian calendar. The days of 29 February of the years AD 100, AD 200, AD 300, and the day created by the irregular application of leap years between the assassination of Caesar and the decree of Augustus re-arranging the calendar in AD 8, remained in effect ... Gregory dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronisation with the seasons. Accordingly, when the new calendar was put in use, the error accumulated in the 13 centuries since the Council of Nicaea was corrected by a deletion of ten days ... ... March 21 + 3 = March 24 (83). According to the Gregorian calendar heliacal Altair would therefore be expected not 300 days but 297 days after equinox, i.e. 3 days too early, in January 15 instead of in January 18 (383). By shifting the dates ahead with only 10 days instead of with 13 days, the heliacal stars would not be properly placed in the calendar. Precession had pushed them a further 3 days into the year and measured from 0h their distances became to short. The adjustment from the Julian equinox date March 25 [325 as in the Council of Nicea] to Gregorian March 21 in a way caused an opposite effect with 4 days, but this adjustment referred to the path of the Sun and not to the positions of the fixed stars. Therefore τ Aquilae should properly follow not in January 21 (386) but in January 18 (383) - as if this star above the head of Antinous was the leader of the Eagle ... Reasonably the bright (0.76) Altair (*300) should once upon a time have indicated where the happy season of rain ended rather than the faint (5.51) τ Aquilae (*303). The dates at the time of the Gate of the Goat seem to be relevant and therefore I have here updated one of my earlier overviews:
From te taketake in Cb3-10 (451) to te ua in Cb4-6 (469) there were 18 days:
In other words, there was a 3-day difference between the positions of the stars in rongorongo times and the correlations used in the C text:
Instead of 75 days' precessional distance back in time to the time of the Gate of the Goat the C text seems to have used merely 75 - 3 = 72 days. ●MARCH 22 (81) + 11 = 92 (APRIL 2) = 153 (June 2) - 61, and 11 + 61 = 72:
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