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Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
- Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
-
Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
DONJCH > 12-08-2020, 09:18 AM
Babylonian Goal Years
The following was inspired by an entry on Nick's site
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He has argued that the 7 planets of traditional astronomy/astrology are represented by the diagrams in Q9/Q!0.
These diagrams are, respectively
1 f68v2
2 f68v1 Sun
3 f67r1 Moon
4 f69r Mercury (46 fold radial symmetry)
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6 f70r1
7 f70 r2
He identifies 2 as Sun and 3 as Moon.
He further notes that 4 has 46 fold radial symmetry and notes that this exactly fits the Babylonian Goal Year number for Mercury.
I thought I would find out a bit more about Babylonian Goal Years and see whether any other features in the diagrams may fit. I am certain that Nick has probably already tried this but still, I thought to report the initial results here.
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"The prediction of planetary phenomena using periods is based upon the assumption that after a certain number of years, a particular phenomenon will occur again on about the same day in the Babylonian calendar."
There are two types of planetary phenomena and thus two values of the Goal Year:
Synodic - planet in relation to Sun as seen from the earth
Sidereal - planet in relation to fixed stars
Tables of small corrections were made to allow for variations in the calendar.
Without further ado, the values for Goal Year are:
Synodic
Jupiter 71 Venus 8 Mercury 46 Saturn 59 Mars 79 Luna 18
Sidereal Jupiter 83 Mars 47 Luna 19
Jumping right in we note that #1 f68v2 has 8 fold symmetry and could be assigned to Venus. This order makes some kind of sense by grouping the inner planets together.
#5 to 8 are not so easy as the symmetry is 28x, 9x and 16x respectively.
Undeterred I counted some of the other features and found the number of folds in the ?wolkenband surrounding the centre of #6, f701r1 is 58.
Perhaps a miss is as good as a mile but on further reading I understand that the way Goal Years were used was to count to the Year BEFORE the event so as to have plenty of time to add in the corrections and be ready in advance.
Please correct me if I have misunderstood this?
So in fact 58 may be a correct Goal Year value for Saturn.
I also went ahead and counted the stars large and small in these diagrams and will report these if anybody is interested.
I thought that one more "hit" and one possible for Nick's theory was perhaps worth reporting and in any case it may be worth looking for matches of these numbers elsewhere in the VMS. -
RE: Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
ReneZ > 12-08-2020, 12:32 PM
Do I occasionally come across as a skeptic?
I would just like to point out that in the recent mail of DONJCB there are many numbers.
At least:
8. 18. 19, 46, 47, 69, 71, 79, 83.
One can also look at other sequences and periods in classical and medieval astronomy, and find many more numbers.
Since there are quite a number of illustrations in the Voynich MS in which one can make many counts (number of segments, number of stars), it is clearly unavoidable that there will be some 'matches', simply by chance.
The challenge is to find a statistically significant non-chance correspondence. -
RE: Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
DONJCH > 12-08-2020, 03:18 PM
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RE: Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
ReneZ > 12-08-2020, 03:47 PM
I am considered both a hyper-skeptic and an optimist
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RE: Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
nickpelling > 12-08-2020, 04:15 PM
When I discussed this in Curse in 2006, I didn't present it as the last word, but more as the first word.
I'm sure Rene wouldn't like to think that his comments here were read by anybody as shutting down discussion. -
RE: Babylonian Goal Years in Q9 and Q10?
DONJCH > 29-09-2020, 09:03 PM
Alrighty, I just recently received my copy of Nick's "Curse" from Amazon!
Reading the relevant pages, I see that Nick assigns Venus as #1, f68v2 so that's a match!
But sadly he stops there.
Of course 8 fold symmetry is common and there could be many explanations.
If for the sake of argument we stick with Saturn as #6, f70r1 (and rationalise the goal year discrepancy somehow) then what about the other planets?
I was wondering whether #7 f70r2, which also has a face, could be Jupiter, the king of planets?
If goal year counts are not found in the other drawings, why are they only included for Mercury? Perhaps because Mercury is the most elusive of planets?