On Early Hellenistic Astronomy: Timocharis and the First Callippic Calendar

Abstract

Our best source of dated astronomical observations that were known to the Greeks in antiquity is Ptolemy's Afmagest (ca. AD 150) and, in the time before Hipparchus in the middle of the 2nd century BC, Ptolemy records 35 such observations, some Babylonian and some Greek.' Of the Babylonian data, Ptolemy reports 7 lunar eclipses observed in Babylon and dated according to regnal years of Babylonian kings (from -720 to -490); one of these, the lunar eclipse of 19 Nov. -501, is also preserved in a Babylonian text.' Another set of 3 lunar eclipse observations from Babylon in -382J-381, is dated in the Athenian calendar, i.e.,.by Athenian month names in a year named after the archon of Athens, as well as in the Egyptian civil calendar [Afmagest iv.111. This raises one of many questions concerning these observations, Why should Babylonian observations be dated in the Athenian calendar? Two of the Greek observational reports may be misleading. As we have argued elsewhere, the summer solstice 'observation' of Meton in -431 was probably intended to fix an alignment rather than to establish a caiendar [see Bowen and Goldstein 1988, 71-77]. Similarly, we suspect that the 'observation' of summer solstice by 'Aristarchans' in -279 [Almagest iii. 11 represents some sort of calculation, but that claim deserves separate t r e a t m e~~t .~ Thus, in our view, the first set of Again, Timocharis, who observed in Alexandria. says that in the 36th year of the First Kallippic Cycle,' on Poseidon 25, which is Phaophi 16, at the beginning of the tenth hour, the moon appeared to occult the northernmost of the stas in the forehead of Scorpius'* very precisely with its northern rim. 18'

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