Once again, glyph number 3-14 could have been used to define the position of a 'heart' star, a star used to find the positions of other stars.
(Source: Hamlet's Mill) Looking again at May 25 on side a of the G text, it is possible to imagine a 'plumb line' involving Ain (the right 'Eye' of Taurus, ε) and the θ pair (slighly lower down):
I have given the date as May 26, for I assumed Gb8-30 had to be counted twice. There is no reason to change this assumption, because it agrees with May 26 as a central position in C:
Tagata in Ga1-2 could have a plumb line at left, where we can see a pair of 'mata' hanging straight down. Half the sky around and visible in the night the 'heart' star in Scorpio (σ) Scorpii could be observed. The front of Ga1-1 is reflected at the back side of Ga1-2 and possibly the idea was to show a position between May 25 and May 26. The distance between Ain and the pair of θ stars in Taurus is short and perhaps they did not constitute a 'plumb line' at all. Instead the pair of stars in Scorpio (σ and Antares) 180º away could have been used to find May 26. In Allen we can read the following: "ς, Double, 3 and 9, creamy white, and τ, 2.9, were Al Niyāt, the Praecordia, or Outworks of the Heart, on either side of, and, as it were, protecting, Antares, the Heart of the Scorpion. Knobel, in his translation of Al Achsasi's work, explains the word as 'the vein which suspends the heart'! "
But τ Scorpii arrived a pair of nights later than Antares:
From Ain (65.7) to Antares (249.1) there are 183.4 days, but from Aldebaran (68.2) to τ Scorpii (250.7) there is precisely 182½ days. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
