From: owner-ane@ (ANE Digest) To: ane-digest Subject: ANE Digest V1999 #222 Reply-To: Sender: owner-ane@ Errors-To: owner-ane@ Precedence: bulk ANE Digest Sunday, August 8 1999 Volume 1999 : Number 222 Re: ane "turning" Re: ane Sothic Cycle revisited ane RE: Sothic Cycle Re: ane Best Translation; M. vs. Hebrew text; "turn to Jacob" "blessings of Jacob"; Oaths Re: ane Bible translations Re: ane Bible translations Re: ane RE: Sothic Cycle ane Re: Best Translation; Does the Pentateuch claim Moses as Scribe? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 23:28:50 EDT From: ECOLING@aol.com Subject: Re: ane "turning" For philologists... In a message dated 8/7/99 3:56:33 PM, whiting@cc.helsinki.fi writes: >One is the rotation of the earth on its axis because that is like a "wheel", Latin "rota", a single object >and the other is the revolution of the earth around the sun because it is a "turning back", along a PATH, with lots of free space around which the path does not occupy (merely as one difference). Quite different meanings, originally, perhaps the distinction still more alive than we realize consciously. Lloyd Anderson Ecological Linguistics ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 15:28:55 +1200 From: "Don Mills" Subject: Re: ane Sothic Cycle revisited Many, many thanks, Bob Whiting, for your classic posting regarding "calendars, the length of various kinds of years, the Sothic cycle, the seasons, the precession of the earth's axis, and how one makes it all come out right." Thanks also for pointing out in an earlier posting my confusion between the solar and sidereal years; I knew the difference (and used the sidereal year in my computation), but was careless. Busy-ness precluded an earlier response. I have a few questions, Bob, some on topics you didn't address; perhaps you or someone else can help: 1. Bob wrote, "To sum up, there is no evidence that the Egyptians used the Sothic cycle to any purpose. As Marc Cooper has pointed out: 'The Sothic Cycle seems to be a hellenistic device relating the sidereal year to the Egyptian civil year, an important issue in the construction of the Julian Calendar.' Assuming that the cycle was considered completed when one or the other of the latter two fell on NYD would result in considerably different dates." My first question is: What does this mean for the use of Sothic dating to fix historical dates? 2. The idea of the Sothic cycle, whatever its relation to the realities of the calendar, rests on the heliacal rising of "Sothis", Egyptian SPDT. My second question is: What native Egyptian information confirms Censorinus' statement, that SPDT refers to the star Sirius? 3. Bob wrote, "What the Egyptians did do was to note the heliacal rising of Sirius and report the date according to the civil calendar. If one assumes that they began their calendar when NYD coincided with the equinox and the heliacal rising and considered that the cycle was completed when NYD fell almost exactly between the other two events then the Sothic cycle can be used for Egyptian dating." My third question is: What evidence is there to support that assumption (and what happens if it turns out to be insupportable)? 4. The Canopus Decree seeks to regulate the Festival of the Star of Isis, which was inaugurated annually by "the day whereon the Star of Isis rises, which, according to the holy books, is regarded as the New Year". Because of the Star's rising "changing one day in the course of four years", the date of the festival (New Year's Day) went "wandering through the seasons", taking other festivals with it. As a result, "festivals which ought to be held in the winter come to be celebrated in the summer" and "festivals which are now kept in the summer come to be celebrated in the winter". So far, this sounds like a description of the Sothic cycle, governed by the (heliacal) rising of Sirius; the inference is that Isis = Sothis = Sirius (thereby seeming to answer my questions 2 and 3; but see what follows). The revolutionary provision of the Canopus Decree was thus: In order for the calendar to correspond to the seasons of nature, the calendar year should henceforth follow the star Sothis. The difference between the two calendars was to be eliminated by adding one day at the start of every fourth year of the calendar of Isis; this would bring it into agreement with the calendar of Sothis, so that "if it fall out that the rising of the star shall, in the course of four years, change to another day, the festival and procession shall not be changed". This seems to indicate that Sothis and Isis were *not* one and the same, that the Sothis calendar did not suffer the same one-day-per-four-years displacement as the Isis calendar did, and that (in the time of Ptolemy III and for at least 700 years before, to allow the winter and summer festivals to swap places at the rate of one day per four years) *the Egyptian calendar was tied to the rising of some other star, not that of Sothis*. The conventional description of the Sothic cycle has the Egyptians using a calendar set by the rising of Sirius; the civil date of this rising wanders through a calendar which is not fixed to the seasons, but the rising of Sirius has (during historical time) always been at the same season year by year. But the Canopus decree describes the calendar in use as being set by the rising of "the Star Isis" (marking the day of the New Year), and says that this rising is not fixed to the seasons, but wanders around from winter to summer, from summer to winter. My fourth question, therefore, is: Which was the star whose rising marked New Year's Day, but which "wandered through the seasons" in a manner that "Sothis" did not? (And is there a clue in the statement of Pliny [Nat. Hist. II, 37], that the Star of Isis was the planet Venus?) 5. Bob wrote, "The first attempt at a calendar that matched the solar year was the 365 day civil calendar." I have reported in an earlier posting that the Ebers papyrus -- of uncertain date, but with some elements relating it to the Old Kingdom -- discloses a 360-day year (as was reported for the primitive Roman year by Plutarch), and that the Canopus Decree reports an earlier calendric revolution by which this was fleshed out to 365 days. According to Samuel Goudsmit's book, *Time*, these five extra days were accounted for as Thoth's winnings from a game of dice with the moon. Randall Larsen has suggested (4 August 1999) that the 365¼-day year was used secretly in parallel with the publicly-used 360-day calendar, but since priests were behind the Ebers papyrus and contributors to the Canopus Decree, this proposal is dubious. My final question, at any rate, is: At what date were the five years added to the calendar? (And is there any basis to Frank Parise's statement in *The Book of Calendars*, that the older Egyptian 360-day calendar, "was changed during the 8th century B.C. to one of 365 days. The extra five days was simply added to the end of the year"?) Regards, Don Mills Wellington New Zealand ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 23:55:26 -0400 From: "Gary Greenberg" Subject: ane RE: Sothic Cycle There have now been several allegations that there are no Egyptian references to the Sothic Cycle outside the Greek context. This is not correct. There are, AFAIK, at least six Sothic sightings recorded from the New Kingdom and earlier, all consistent with the basic Sothic hypothesis. There is one for the 12th Dyn and for the SIP, two for the 18th Dyn, and 1 or 2 for the 19th Dyn. The 2nd might be the 20th Dyn.) To attack the Sothic hypothesis for dating purposes, one must show that all of those readings are based on erroneous translations. Also, in using Sothic datings for Egyptian Chronology, the actual interval between heliacal risings of the Sothic Cycle on New Years Day is used. This period is not 1460 years, but a variable period due to Sothis's own period of motion. The period before Censorinus's date was 1453/2 years long, giving a heliacal rising of Sothis on New Year's Day of 1314/1313. The period before that was 1456/7 years long, giving a Sothic rising on New Year's day in 2770. Parker correlates the 12th Dynasty evidence with lunar cycle evidence to arrive at a date of 2772 for the 7th Year of Senwosret III (per the heliacal rising of Sothis during the 7th year of his reign.) There is some debate over his conclusions but I think it is almost universally accepted by the establishment that there is a Sothic date for the 7th year of some king in the 12th Dyn, and which one it is has a minor effect on 12th Dyn chronology. Sothic sighting in connection with Seti I and either Ramesses II/III show that Seti I must have come to the throne very close to if not on the start of the 1314/1313 Sothic/New Year's date , which would be some indication that the era of Menophris did in fact refer to the start of his reign. Such a date is also consistent with his reign of 11 years followed by Ramesses II in 1305, one of the three accepted possible dates for the start of that reign. Also, Manetho, in discussing the reigns of the gods prior to the 1st Dyn, measures them, in part, against a Sothic Cycle ("15 generations of the Sothic Cycle", i.e., 15 consecutive reigns by one group of kings that took up a portion of the Sothic Cycle duration.) Gary Greenberg ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 00:11:17 -0400 From: "Gary Greenberg" Subject: Re: ane Best Translation; M. vs. Hebrew text; "turn to Jacob" "blessings of Jacob"; Oaths > Without considering the historicity issue, the Pentateuch itself claims to > have been partly written by Moses Where in the Pentateuch that stated? Gary Greenberg ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 17:09:33 +1200 From: "Don Mills" Subject: Re: ane Bible translations Sheila Shiki Y Michaels wrote, "Why not use an interlinear bible which prints an English translation directly under each word & has a gloss from one of the standard translations in the margin? ... I was fond of the Green _Interlinear_ from Baker house, but it is no longer in print. The Kohlenberger _Interlinear NIV...._ is only fair, but it will have to do, as it is the only one in print." I use Jay Green's *The Interlinear Bible*, which used to be published by Hendrickson Publishers (after Baker House?), but which (a web search reveals) is now available from Sovereign Grace Publishers. It uses Masoretic Text in the OT and Textus Receptus (TR) in the NT (hence needs to be used with care), but for NT offers an appendix comparing the readings "that appear in the vast majority of extant manuscripts [essentially the TR as used] and those that have been recently appearing in modern versions" (i.e., drawn from older and theoretically more reliable manuscripts). It also has tables of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets to help the non-specialist reader, while each word is keyed by number to the corresponding numbered words in the Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Lexicons in Strong's Concordance. Besides the latter, I also have the Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew Dictionary and the (New) Thayer Greek-English Lexicon, both in Hendrickson editions keyed to Strong's Concordance. I don't know if the latter two are still available, but my quick peek at the web via the new Google search engine (itself worth a visit at www.google.com -- it finds about 3 times as many *relevant* references as any other search engine around) produced this URL for more information (including current pricing) on *The Interlinear Bible*: http://www.chrlitworld.com/BookSGP/interlin.htm These four resources (Green, Strong, BDBG, and Thayer) provide a formidable set of reference materials at an astonishingly low price. I'm aware how dangerous it is to allow amateurs like myself access to such material (and I'm being realistic, not sarcastic), but I'm certain that, used responsibly, and in conjunction with a good commentary *and* atlas, they bring the non-reader of Hebrew and Greek as close as they'll currently get to The Real Thing. No substitute for doing the study, of course ... Good luck, Henrik. Regards Don Mills Wellington New Zealand ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 17:19:14 +1200 From: "Don Mills" Subject: Re: ane Bible translations I forgot to remark in my immediately previous posting that I have two books which provide very useful commentary on English-language Bible translations themselves. They are *So Many Versions?* by Sakae Kubo and Walter F. Specht (Zondervan, 1983) and *The English Bible from KJV to NIV* by Jack P. Lewis (Baker, 1991). If you can get hold of them (I don't know if they're still in print), they're well worth reading, even if (inevitably) somewhat out-of-date. Regards Don Mills Wellington New Zealand ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 19:00:02 +1200 From: "Don Mills" Subject: Re: ane RE: Sothic Cycle Gary Greenberg wrote (Sunday, August 08, 1999): >There have now been several allegations that there are no Egyptian >references to the Sothic Cycle outside the Greek context. This is not >correct. There are, AFAIK, at least six Sothic sightings recorded from the >New Kingdom and earlier, all consistent with the basic Sothic hypothesis. > >There is one for the 12th Dyn and for the SIP, two for the 18th Dyn, and 1 >or 2 for the 19th Dyn. The 2nd might be the 20th Dyn.) To attack the Sothic >hypothesis for dating purposes, one must show that all of those readings are >based on erroneous translations. The general consensus is that the rising of the Nile was a critical annual event in the life of the nation, and that this occurrence coincided tolerably well with the date at which Sirius (Sothis, SPDT) rose heliacally (at the same time as the Sun). I have no doubt that, given the importance of this coincidence, the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius would have been watched with great care, and that there are some texts indicating that, for whatever reason, it was occasionally felt desirable to record that date. Occasional records of an annual occurrence, though, are a far cry from the claim that Egyptian records explicitly describe, or even refer to, the 1460-year Sothic cycle. And "at least six Sothic sightings" is a pretty meagre harvest for something that is supposed to have been so fundamental over a period of around 3,000 years of continuous recorded civilisation. In any case, how reliable are these six records? Are they "based on erroneous translations," as Gary supposed they would have to be to be proven fallacious? I quote Wofgang Helck, Enc. Brit. 15th Edn., Vol. 20, "History", p. 647: "There are six ancient Egyptian documents extant giving Sothis dates, but only three of these are of value." Already the "six" are cut in half. Let's examine the remainder, one at a time: "The oldest [writes Helck] is a letter from the town of Kahun warning a priest that the heliacal rising of Sothis will take place on the 16th day of the 8th month of year 7 of a king who, according to internal evidence, is Sesostris III of the 12th dynasty. This date corresponds to 1866 BC, according to the corrected Sothic cycle." So the Kahun (or Illahun) Papyrus doesn't name the king involved; Sesostris III was Borchardt's final choice, but he also considered Amenemhet III. But there is no firm dating indication within the document, and the first of the three pillars of Sothic dating rests on the uncertainties of interpretation. And, of course, all it does is record a date; it shows no awareness of a 1460-year cycle attached to that date, nor does it demonstrate in any way that the Sothic cycle interpretation placed on it is the correct one. "The next date," Helck continues, "is given by a medical papyrus written at the beginning of the 18th dynasty, to which a calendar is added, possibly to ensure a correct conversion of dates used in the receipts to the actual timetable. Here it is said that the 9th day of the 11th month of year 9 of King Amenhotep I was the day of the heliacal rising of Sothis -- i.e., 1538 BC ..." This is the Ebers Papyrus, celebrated for the view it gives of ancient medicine. The EP is problematical in that its attached calendar provides for 12 months of 30 days each, with no epagomenal days at the end (the 5 days that were added in later periods to make up the 365-day year). But if the Egyptians were using a 360-day year in the time of Amenhotep 1st (and there's plentiful evidence that 360-day calendars were common in the ancient world), it's no wonder the civil calendar and the seasons were out of step with one another; there is no need to invoke the "Sothic cycle" to explain it. The Ebers calendar presents other puzzles: the names of the Feasts of the twelve Pharaonic months which it provides are all "shifted" nine days from the start of the month, as calculated from Sirius. The Papyrus states that the start of the New Year fell in the month of Epiphi, on the ninth day of the month, whereas Brugsch showed that the New Year's Feast accountable to the star Sirius corresponded to the first of the month of Mesori. But besides these calendrical problems, the fact is that the state of the EP text meant that the date supposed to be given in it was worked out only after much revision, textual emendation, and guesswork; it may not be the correct date at all. Nor does it necessarily date from the time of Amenhotep I. Indeed, one portion of the papyrus suggests a much earlier origin: Paragraph 856a states that, "the book of driving wekhedu from all the limbs of a man was found in writings under the two feet of Anubis in Letopolis and was brought to the majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Den". The reference to the Lower Egyptian king Den (Dewen, Udimu) is an anachronism which suggests an origin closer to the First Dynasty, of which Den was the fourth monarch. At all events, the second of the three pillars of the Sothic cycle (with an uncertain date in an apparently 360-day year) now looks decidedly shaky. What does Helck have to say about the third? "The third Sothis date shows that Sirius rose heliacally some time during the reign of Thutmose III, which lasted for 54 years, on the 28th day of 11th month; so year 1458 BC ([if the] point of observation [was] at Memphis) or 1438 BC ([if] point of observation at Thebes) must have belonged to the reign of this king." This record, found on a stone on Elephantine, was also discussed by Borchardt. Besides the uncertainty of the regnal year in which the observation was made, the fact is that (despite Helck's statement) it is not recorded as being a heliacal observation. Even if it were, of course, the fixing of Thutmose III's reign is correct only if Sothic dating works as advertised; in no way does it *prove* that Sothic dating works as advertised. So the six native pillars of the Sothic system are reduced to three that are "of value". These three all present considerable difficulties of interpretetation, none of them explicitly presents a complete and exact date which can be confirmed by external data, one of them may not even be a heliacal rising, and none of them even hints at the existence of a Sothic cycle. Of course, there is no reason they should, given that it is now generally accepted (despite what popular works and web sites might say) that the Sothic cycle was a discovery of the Hellenic period, and its application to resolving Egyptian dates an invention of our own era. Gary concluded with the following statement, >Also, Manetho, in discussing the reigns of the gods prior to the 1st Dyn, >measures them, in part, against a Sothic Cycle ("15 generations of the >Sothic Cycle", i.e., 15 consecutive reigns by one group of kings that took >up a portion of the Sothic Cycle duration.) > Now, that's a claim I've never seen before. Recent penury made me pass up an opportunity to buy a collation and study of the Manethonian "text"; can anyone provide more information about its mention of "the Sothic Cycle", a term I thought to be the invention of 19th-century scholarship? Regards Don Mills Wellington New Zealand ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 21:44:14 -1000 From: "Randall Larsen" Subject: ane Re: Best Translation; Does the Pentateuch claim Moses as Scribe? Gary Greenburg and Listmembers, >Gary Greenberg wrote: >> Without considering the historicity issue, the Pentateuch itself claims to have been partly written by Moses Where in the Pentateuch that stated? *** Exodus 24:4, 7 (KJV) And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. [I suspect Moses is depicted here as the keeper of the Calendar as well?] ...... 7. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people; and they said, All the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.. [IMO the Law of obedience is a Temple covenant] Compare these verses to Exodus 19:7 where came and called the for the elders of the people and laid before their faces [does this imply a writing?] all these words, which the Lord commanded him. Sure this is self-referential evidence (oops). I also don't have a verse that says Moses wrote everything in the Pentateuch; however, that is a possible inference from the above passages. Do you agree? Who else besides Moses among the Hebrews (except perhaps a house slave) would have been trained in writing? In the circumstances described, IMO only Moses would be trained in writing.. Were there even Hebrew characters at the purported time? (The traditions of the Sefer Yetshirah aside for the moment). There is I believe a Rabbinic tradition that Moses was the scribe for the Penatateuch. Incidently I agree with your points on Egyptian use of the sothic cycle that's why I am struggling to understand it from a simulated Egyptian viewpoint. kindest regards, Randall Larsen ------------------------------ End of ANE Digest V1999 #222 **************************** Back issues are available on the Oriental Institute World-Wide Web (WWW) site at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/OI_ANE.html