Subject: [HM] Egyptian/Greek sidereal time
From: Milo Gardner (mrgardner@address.com)
Date: Thu Feb 10 2000 - 22:18:31 EST
Dear HM listmembers:
It has been noted that the 'decan star risings' indeed would have been
an insufficient model for Egyptians of 1100 BC, and later Greeks to
compute astronomical times. What was plausibly available was the single
dial sidereal time star clock, based on the double dial solar time star
clock found on Dendra's 100 AD ceiling.
Ptolemy would have been very familiar with the double dial method of
computing solar time, at night, and since we follow the 24 hour day -
based on Egyptian time, the 24 hour single dial star clock - as Peter
Lancaster Brown describes in Star and Planet Spotting, in its appendix,
should be clear for all to read.
This suggestion may appear to be a stretch of the available facts.
However, in 1,200 years, a decan sidereal time could have easily been
developed, a simple one dial construction, compared to the more
complicated double dial used to comple solar time - found on Dendra's
ceiling, with zero being at the 7 o'clock position on the 12 hour solar
dial.
Regards to all,
Milo Gardner
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