28-05-2026, 11:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 28-05-2026, 11:11 AM by Radim Dobeš.)
(28-05-2026, 10:39 AM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(28-05-2026, 06:54 AM)Radim Dobeš wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.These are not errors and the geometry is well thought out.
If you look critically at all the diagrams, you must conclude the opposite. The Scribe who drew them could not even divide a circle into four equal parts. The spacing of the nymphs around each diagram is quite uneven; he typically used too much space between nymphs, rays, etc. at the beginning of each ring and then had to squeeze them at the end of the ring. In later diagrams he gave up and just drew on top of the diagram the nymphs that did not fit inside it.
On page f6r, the reason for that special decorated sector (that you interpreted as Pagume) is almost certainly that the did not count the "cups" with thin "stems", and ended up with an odd number of them. So when he next wrote a label in every other sector, he found that at the end he had two empty sectors next to each other. To fix that he drew an extra line dividing one of the sectors in two parts. But since he had no text, or the newly created middle sector was too narrow, he instead filled it with decorative hatching.
Incompetence is also the simplest explanation for why those "cups" are divided by the thin lines in the outer band into groups of varying sizes -- 2, 3, or (at 10:30) 3.5 "cups". There most probably
were meant to be 48 cups (not 45) and 48 sectors (not 46) with 24 (not 22) radial labels, divided into 16 groups of 3 cups...
Quote:This is a diagram describing the properties of the moon.[...] the lunar month is 29 days
But then why do all the other diagrams have 30 nymphs? And, again, that diagram has 29 nymphs, 30 labels, and 31 stars. Which number is the meaningful one?
Quote: I apologize, but I will keep this in my theory for now.
No need to apologize. I am not asking you to do anything -- just warning you that you are probably wasting your time by assuming that the details of the drawings are meaningful, and that the color paints are original.
All the best, --stolfi
That's fine. Just for inspiration in research. These Ethiopian diagrams could have served visually and possibly inspired the author of VM. However, they contain completely different. And to the question why 29 is the answer lunar month, and to the question why 30 is the answer solar month. Each diagram shows something different.

