The once proverbial First Point of Aries referred to the zero place at right ascension 0h and March 21, from where the positions of the stars were to be counted. There were 24 hours before a star would return, before it had completed its diurnal cycle. I have instead used 365¼ units of time for completing the diurnal star cycle. The G text could have been designed similarly, although perhaps with 366 'right ascension days' instead of 365¼. The ancient Chinese used not 360° for a full circle but 365¼ units of time - implying a sense of correspondence (resemblence) with the path of the Sun around the year. And in ancient Egypt they counted to 360 days in their Sun calendar - with 5 extra nights added: ... Nut, whom the Greeks sometimes identified with Rhea, was goddess of the sky, but it was debatable if in historical times she was the object of a genuine cult. She was Geb's twin sister and, it was said, married him secretly and against the will of Ra. Angered, Ra had the couple brutally separated by Shu and afterwards decreed that Nut could not bear a child in any given month of any year. Thoth, Plutarch tells us, happily had pity on her. Playing draughts with the Moon, he won in the course of several games a seventy-second part of the Moon's light with which he composed five new days. As these five intercalated days did not belong to the official Egyptian calendar of three hundred and sixty days, Nut was thus able to give birth successively to five children: Osiris, Haroeris (Horus), Set, Isis and Nepthys ... (New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology.) I have loosely used the expression 'heliacal' to denote star positions counted from 0h as if the cycle of the year was as regular as the diurnal cycle of the Earth around its axis. In reality the path of the Earth around the Sun is not a perfect circle but an ellipse. The northern 'summer' (from spring equinox to autumn equinox) is longer than the distance from autumn equinox to spring equinox ('winter'). In order to describe the pattern of 'longitudes' affixed on the sky dome the construction of a Spider was useful:
Makemson (The Morning Star Rises): In 1865 Kamakau recorded the Instructions in Ancient Hawaiian Astronomy as Taught by Kaneakahowaha, Astronomer, Seer, and Counselor of the Court of King Kamehameha I from which the following extract was taken: Take the lower part of a gourd or hula drum, rounded as a wheel (globe), on which several lines are to be marked and burned in, as described hereafter. These lines are called na alanui o na hoku hookele, the highways of the navigation stars, which stars are also called na hoku ai-aina, the stars which rule the land. Stars lying outside these three lines are called na hoku a ka lewa, foreign, strange, or outside stars. The first line is drawn from Hoku-paa, the fixed or North Star, to the most southerly star of Newe, the Southern Cross. (This hour circle coincides with the meridian on an evening in June, when it would divide the visible sky into halves.) The portion (of the sky) to the right or east of this line (the observer is evidently assumed to be facing north) is called ke ala ula a Kane, the dawning or bright road of Kane, and that to the left or west is called ke alanui maawe ula a Kanaloa, the much-traveled highway of Kanaloa. (Kane and Kanaloa were important gods in the Polynesian pantheon, Kane being associated with light, Kanaloa with darkness.) Then three lines are drawn east and west, one across the northern section indicates the northern limit of the Sun (corresponding with the Tropic of Cancer) about the 15th and 16th days of the month Kaulua (i.e., the 21st or 22nd of June) and is called ke alanui polohiwa a Kane, the black-shining road of Kane. The line across the southern section indicates the southern limit of the Sun about the 15th or 16th days of the month Hilinama (December 22) and is called ke alanui polohiwa a Kanaloa, the black-shining road of Kanaloa. The line exactly around the middle of the sphere is called ke alanui a ke ku'uku'u, the road of the spider, and also ke alanui i ka Piko a Wakea, the way to the navel of Wakea (the Sky-father). Between these lines are the fixed stars of the various lands, na hokupaa a ka aina. (These are the stars which hang suspended in the zeniths of the Polynesian islands most of which lie within the tropics.) On the sides are the stars by which one navigates. The North Star (Polaris, α Ursae Majoris) was the origin of the first line on the gourd and it was also the 10th and last of the Tahitian 'star pillars'. Ana-nia (Polaris), was probably at the 'sweeping curve' in Gb7-24 - where we can count 72 * 4 = 288 = 2 * 144 (= 32 * 9). May 24 was day 144 from January 1 and 288 (twice as much) was equal to 32 * 9 and alluding to the day number for Antares in November 25. And notably FEBRUARY 13 was day 329 counted from MARCH 21 - suggesting a correspondence with the position of Antares. At Gb7-24 we can cound 72 * 4 = 288 (= 2 * 144):
The following rising fish in Gb7-25 (where 72 * 5 = 360) is of the type which I have labelled vaha mea from the vocabulary of Metoro Tau'a Ure when he in 1873 A.D. read some rongorongo texts for Bishop Jaussen on Tahiti.
The word vaha means opening (as between such fingers, rima, which are spreading out, hora) and mea means red (as the colour of dawn). The open mouth of a rising fish is like a sign of expansion (<). Inside an open fish mouth gills for breathing under water would have been visible.
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