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6. By the way, we have not yet taken notice of the star names, to begin with Al Jabhah for η Leonis:
"It [Regulus] was of course prominent among the lunar mansion stars, and chief in the 8th nakshatra that bore its name, Maghā, made up by all the components of the Sickle; and it marked the junction with the adjoining station Pūrva Phalgunī; the Pitares, Fathers, being the regents of the asterism, which was figured as a House. In Arabia, with γ [Algieba], ζ [Adhafera], and η [Al Jabhah] of the Sickle, it was the 8th manzil, Al Jabhah, the Forehead." (Allen)
As to the name Algieba for γ Leonis Allen informs us: "Smyth wrote of this that it has been improperly called Algieba, from Al jeb-bah, the forehead; for no representation of the Lion, which I have examined, will justify that position, - a well-founded criticism, although as, after Regulus, it is the brightest member of the manzil Al Jabbah, it may have taken the latter's title. The star, however, is on the Lion's mane, the Latin word for which, Juba, distinctly appeared for γ with Bayer, Riccoli, and Flamsteed. Hence it is not at all unlikely that Algieba, - also written Algeiba, - is from the Latin, Arabicised either by error in translation or by design." Most interesting, however, is what Allen has to say relating to Adhafera: "ζ, Double, 3.2 and 6, is Burritt's Adhafera, Aldhafara, and Aldhafera, by some confusion perhaps with Al Ashfār of the nearby ε and μ. It is on the crest of the mane, and was one of the manzil Al Jabhah; sometimes taking the latter's name, as in Baily's edition of Ulug Beg. From a point a little to the west of ζ, and not much farther from γ, issue the Leonids, the meteor stream of November 9th to 17th, its maximum now occurring on the 13th-14th, which about every thirty-three years has furnished such wonderful displays, the last in 1866 and the next due in 1899. Their first noticed appearance may have been in the year 137, since which date the stream has completed fifty-two revolutions [137 + 33 * 52 = 1853].
According to Theophanes of Byzantium, the shower was seen from there in November, 472; but the late Professor Newton, our deservedly great authority on the whole subject of meteors, commenced his list of the Leonids with their appearance on the 13th of October, 902, the Arabian Year of the Stars, during the night of the death of King Ibrahim ben Ahmad, and added: It will be seen that all these showers are at intervals of a third of a century, that they are at a fixed day of the year, and that the day has moved steadily and uniformly along the calendar at the rate of about a month in a thousand years. ... Many other meteor streams are visible about the same time as the Leonids, Mr. W. F. Denning having given a list of sixty-eight; the brightest of these, the Ursids, being often mistaken by the casual observer for the Leonids, as their radiant, near μ Ursae Majoris [Tania Australis] is less than 20º distant from the radiant in Leo." Thus there seems to have been some reason for connecting the Great Bear with the Lion. From these constellations - rising together - spectacular meteor showers were generated. They came from the mane of the Lion (male) and from the uplifted back paw of the Bear (female). Could there be some connection with number 33? ... the renewal of kingship at the climax of the Makahiki coincides with the rebirth of nature. For in the ideal ritual calendar, the kali'i battle follows the autumnal appearance of the Pleiades, by thirty-three days - thus precisely, in the late eighteenth century, 21 December, the winter solstice. The king returns to power with the sun ... ... Under Mosaic law, a mother who had given birth to a man-child was considered unclean for seven days; moreover she was to remain for three and thirty days 'in the blood of her purification', which makes a total of 40 days .... In a footnote Allen adds: "When first observed the radiant point was in Cancer." The right ascension of the radiant point has increased since the night when King Ibrahim ben Ahmed died (when the stars fell). From the year 902 to 1866 the precession must have moved the point forward by ca 964 / 72 = 13.4 days. Therefore the point has a proper motion component in the same direction with more than half a month in a thousand years, corresponding to the movement from Cancer to Leo. Once the radiant point could have been at Praesaepe (close to 20º N). When a new ruler arrives to succeed the old one a Saturnian Sickle could be the sign for cutting the old one off (cfr Eye in the Mud and Auriga.).
... In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the Theogony, Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod named their first six sons and six daughters the Titans, the three one-hundred-armed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes. Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or 'Straining Gods' ... If we count 33 days prior to Regulus we will be around glyph 57:
The Hawaiian calendar has the night of Kane (Tane) as number 26 but it was called the 27th night of Moon. There was no 26th night of Moon (cfr at Ure Honu), it was jumped over in a way which reminds one of the Chinese hotels with no 4th floor. We have so far no star at Ga2-25, but I cannot remember we have avoided putting one there. |
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