next page

table of contents home

6. Also Flamsteed has drawn a picture where the 6 threads are whimsically arranged:

He evidently invites us to count all the beads on these strings. I tried to do it quickly on one of them, but it was not very easy and I have to try better some other time. However, for whatever it may be worth: my result was ca 72 which implies the circumference of one of these bowls could be 3 * 72 = 216 nights long.

... Among the Nahyssan of S. Carolina time was measured and a rude chronology arranged by means of strings of leather with knots of various colour, like the Peruvian quipos. The Dakota use a circle as the symbol of time, a smaller one for a year and a larger one for a longer period: the circles are arranged in rows, thus: OOO or O-O-O. The Pima of Arizona make use of a tally. The year-mark is a deep notch across the stick...

2 * 216 = 432 is the glyph number at Achernar (the end of the River), and the bowls of Flamsteed could represent the pair of starry sky domes ruled by Moon in the nights of summer and winter.

Gb7-18 Gb7-19 Gb7-20 Gb7-21 (432)
Ksora (20.1)     Achernar (23.3)
'10 (100) '11 '12 '13