When a star is together with the Sun it cannot be observed. Its heliacal rising is therefore usually defined as 16 nights later, when the first glimpse of the star (lagging behind the onrushing Sun) is possible to be perceived late at dawn. In the time of Gregorius XIII the first star with a name in Cancer, to appear at the horizon in the east, was A Heap of Fuel (μ Cancri) and this did not happen at dawn in ºJuly 17 but at dawn 16 nights later, viz. in day 198 + 16 = 214 (ºAugust 2). Moving in the opposite direction, from Naos and ºJuly 16, we will arrive at ºJuly 16 (197) - 16 = 181 (ºJune 30). Sirius follows the Sun (not the stars) and therefore he should rise with the Sun in June 30 every year:
Sirius is a special case, not only the brightest star in the night sky but also strangely resistent to the river of time which pulls the stars ahead, forcing them to rise gradually later and later in the year: ... The Sothic cycle was based on what is referred to in technical jargon as 'the periodic return of the heliacal rising of Sirius', which is the first appearance of this star after a seasonal absence, rising at dawn just ahead of the sun in the eastern portion of the sky. In the case of Sirius the interval between one such rising and the next amounts to exactly 365.25 days - a mathematically harmonious figure, uncomplicated by further decimal points, which is just twelve minutes longer than the duration of the solar year. If the Julian calendar and heliacal Sirius once upon a time 'walked hand in hand' then the Gregorian calendar should be somewhat out of phase with Sirius:
Sirius should then slowly drift forward in the Gregorian calendar (not keeping up with the pace of the Sun), and counted from A.D. 1582 this drift would amount to around 3 / 400 * 260 = 2 days. Given the proper motion of Sirius has not changed since Egyptian times we can then conclude that in Gregorian times Sirius would have risen heliacally not in ºJune 26 (177) - as I have presented it above - but in day 177 + 2 = 179 (ºJune 28). However, the proper motion of the stars is irrelevant for my method of assigning RA days according to the situation in space in rongorongo times. My added earlier dates are there only as a way to indicate approximate earlier positions in time. In other words, my assumption is that the G text primarily was designed as a map of the postions of the stars and only secondarily as a calendar. Ga2-7 could therefore represent Sirius. But an alternative reading could be to connect the glyphs with the spatial RA positions of the stars not in rongorongo times but in Gregorian times. Sirius would then have risen somewhere in the days before the 'fishhook', or why not in ºJune 30:
Surely the pope could have tried to put Sirius where ºJuly was about to begin. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
