Sol em Gémeos: De 20 de Maio a 21 de Junho de 2021

Sol em Gémeos: De 20 de Maio a 21 de Junho.

O Sol ingressa em Gémeos hoje às 20h37min.

Lua em Virgem: De 19 a 22 de Maio de 2021

Lua em Virgem: das 22h00min de hoje às 02h36min do dia 22.

A Origem do Zodíaco - Circulação e Transmissão Cultural: Exemplo Textual

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective, 39-41.

As Aristotle’s claim about Egyptian and Babylonian observations implies, Greeks were engaging with the celestial scholarship of their eastern neighbours well before the Macedonian conquest. Some Mesopotamian constellation and star names were borrowed in the late second or early first millennium and are attested in fragmentary Greek astronomical poems from the eighth to the sixth centuries BC. If reliable, Pliny’s claim that the astronomer Cleostratus of Tenedos introduced the signa in the zodiac suggests that zodiacal constellations were known in the Greek world by the late sixth or fifth century, although not the uniform zodiac of twelve 30-degree signs, which was not invented in Babylonia until around 400 BC. Nor could the uniform zodiac have been known to Meton of Athens or his near-contemporary Euctemon around 430 BC: apart from questions of chronology, Daryn Lehoux has effectively demolished the thesis of Albert Rehm and Bartel Van der Waerden that Meton and Euctemon used zodiacal months to construct their parapegmata (lists of dates of solstices, equinoxes and annual risings and settings of fixed stars, combined with weather predictions). Meton did, however, draw on Babylonian celestial scholarship in another way. The Metonic Cycle attributed to him (the period of almost nineteen years where the solar year and lunar month coincide, which enabled the development of consistent intercalation schemes) is almost certainly derived from Babylonia, where a similar cycle had been in use since around 500 BC.

Secure evidence for Greek knowledge of the zodiacal constellations, although still not necessarily the uniform zodiac, comes in the fourth century with the Phenomena of Eudoxos of Knidos (ca. 390–340 BC), known today via a commentary by Hipparchus of Nicaea and Aratus’ versification of its contents in his Phenomena. Aratus’ statement that each night six ‘twelfth-parts (duodekades) of the (zodiacal) circle’ set and six rise could refer to the zodiac signs, but he makes no explicit mention of the 360-degree zodiacal circle, and Hipparchus’ criticism of Aratus for conflating the zodiacal constellations with the signs implies that neither he nor Eudoxos made this distinction. If De Caelo predates Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle’s claims about planetary movements reported by the ‘Chaldaeans’ indicates that Greeks were also using Babylonian observational data before the Hellenistic period.

While these examples attest to cross-cultural contact, they are relatively isolated and self-contained; there is no evidence for detailed Greek knowledge of Babylonian astronomical or astrological scholarship before the third century BC. Unsurprisingly, then, the crucial period of cross-cultural exchange seems to have been that which brought the inhabitants of Greece and Mesopotamia into closer contact than ever before. We will examine the results of that contact across three areas of celestial enquiry: data and terms relating to celestial observation; methods of predicting celestial phenomena; and the concepts and techniques used to interpret the significance of these phenomena for events on Earth.

Stevens, K., 2019, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lua em Leão: De 17 a 19 de Maio de 2021

 

Lua em Leão: das 13h44min de hoje às 14h17min do dia 19.

Lua em Caranguejo: De 15 a 17 de Maio de 2021

Lua em Caranguejo: das 02h31min de hoje às 13h44min do dia 17.

Júpiter em Peixes: De 13 de Maio a 28 de Julho de 2021 (1º Ingresso)

Júpiter em Peixes: De 13 de Maio a 28 de Julho (1º Ingresso).

Júpiter ingressa em Peixes às 23h36min.

Lua em Gémeos: De 12 a 15 de Maio de 2021

Lua em Gémeos: das 13h43min de hoje às 02h31min do dia 15.