The chronology of the ancient Greeks. IN

ancient greek calendar

At the beginning of the first millennium BC. e. V Ancient Greece lunisolar calendars began to be created, and each policy (city-state) had its own calendar system. Despite their similarities, each calendar had its own peculiarity and was somewhat different from all the others. The year was divided into 12 months, each of which began with neomenia. To connect with the seasons, an additional, 13th month was periodically inserted.

In different cities of Greece, the months had their own names, but the Athenian names were most common, namely:

Approximate correspondence to our months is indicated in brackets.

The year most often began with the month of the summer solstice, which at that time fell on the hecatombeon (July).

In leap years, a second poseideon was inserted as the embolismic month; sometimes the second skyrophorion was an additional month.

At different times, embolic years alternated in different ways. So, in the VI century. BC e. in some places in Greece, an octaetheride was used, in which 3 out of 8 years were leap years - the 2nd, 5th and 8th years of the cycle.

The most popular in Greece was the calendar developed by Meton. In 432 BC. e., during the festivities dedicated to the 86th Olympiad, a parapegma was installed in the center of Athens - a stone slab with holes into which pins were inserted with the numbers of the current month. Close to holes there was a text carved on a stone indicating upcoming astronomical phenomena, such as the rising and setting of certain stars, the position of the Sun in the constellations, and other phenomena.

Further improvement of the Greek calendar is associated with the names of Calippus and Hipparchus, which we discussed in the section on the mathematical theory of lunar and lunisolar calendars.

Chronology. In Ancient Greece until the middle of the first millennium BC. e. events were dated by the names of officials. So, in Athens, years were counted according to the names of eponyms - heads of executive power (archons) responsible for the correctness of the calendar.

In the IV century. BC e. the common Hellenic chronology for the Olympiads spread. The history of this chronology is as follows. In ancient Greece, widely developed sport games. Starting from 776 BC. e. in the city of Olympia, once every 4 years, games took place that took on the character of large national celebrations. According to the place where they were held, they were called Olympic. The Olympic Games were timed to coincide with the beginning of the year, but since this time was not associated with a specific date due to the abundance of calendar systems, messengers had to be sent to all cities before the games to notify the population about the upcoming celebrations.

The Olympic Games entered the life of the ancient Greeks so much that they began to count the time according to the Olympiads and conditionally attributed the beginning of their era to July 1, 776 BC. e. It is believed that the first Olympic Games took place on this day.

The chronology according to the Olympiads was first applied in 264 BC. e. by the ancient Greek historian Timaeus, and this account lasted for about seven centuries. Although in 394 AD. e. Emperor Theodosius I canceled the Olympic Games, the calculation of time according to the Olympiads was applied a little later.

In the chronology of the Olympiads, the years were designated by the serial number of the Olympiad and the number of the year in the four years. So, the victory of the Greeks over the Persians in the naval battle in the Salamis Strait dates back to the numbers “75. 1", which means "the first year of the 75th Olympiad".

The translation of these dates into our summer calendar is carried out according to the formula

A \u003d 776 - [(Ol - 1) × 4 + (t - 1)],

where A is the desired date, O1 is the number of the Olympiad, (t is the number of the year in the Olympiad.

The Battle of Salamis took place in the first year of the 75th Olympiad. Let's translate this date into our chronology.

Substituting the values ​​O1 = 75 and I = 1 into the formula, we obtain

A \u003d 776 - [(75 - 1) × 4 + (1 - 1) 1 \u003d 480.

Indeed, the Battle of Salamis took place in September 480 BC. e.

If the expression in square brackets in this formula turned out to be 776 or more, then 775 would have to be subtracted from it. In this case, we would get the year of our era.

Nilsson, whose work "Primitive Time-Reckoning" ("Primitive Time Reckoning") is the most authoritative in matters ancient history calendar, argues that the Greek calendar was not Greek in origin and that it was introduced no earlier than the 7th century, or at the most in the 8th century BC. e. under the supervision of the Delphic priesthood.
The first part of this conclusion is undoubtedly correct in the sense that the Greek calendar did not belong to the local traditions of Greek-speaking immigrants in the Aegean region. They adopted it from those cultures with which they had come into contact before. But when? If it was a product of religious belief, as Nilsson suggests, then it is highly likely that, like much else in Greek religion, it was inherited from the Minoan era. There are positive reasons for considering it more ancient and less dependent on Delphi than Nilsson admits.
If this calendar was compiled relatively recently at Delphi, we would expect to find some uniformity in the beginning of the calendar year and in the names of the months. But it's not. Only in Athens and Samos the year begins, as in Delphi, with the summer solstice. The Delphic names for the five months occur sporadically elsewhere, but the rest of the names are unique. Moreover, a comparison of the Attic-Ionian and Doric names suggests that their history followed the history of the dialects themselves.
The Attic names agree closely with the Delian ones, indicating an Attic-Ionic prototype older than the Ionian migration. We naturally turn to Boeotia. There we find the month of laziness, mentioned by Hesiod; it is found both in Delos and throughout Ionia. In Athens, the festival of Lenaeus was held in the same month, and no doubt, like other cults of Dionysus, this cult came to Athens from Boeotia. Likewise, the month of Poseidon, found only in the Ionian calendars, resembles the panionic cult of Poseidon Heliconios, who, as the name indicates, originated in Boeotia.

Athens Hecatombius* Metageitnius Boedromius Pianopsius Maimacterius Posideon Gamelius Anthesterius Elaphebolius Munichius Targelius Skyrophorius
Business with
Hecatombium
Metagateny
Bufonius
Apaturius
Aresius
poseideon
Leney*
Hieros
Galaxia
Artemisius
Targely
Panemos
Rhodes. Panamos Karney Daly
Thesmophorium*
Sminthia
Diostius
Theudeius
Pedagogical
Badromy
Artamity
Agrianius
Hyakinthius
Delphi Apellei* Bukatiy i
Boatoy; - Gerey
Daidophorium
Poitropius
Amaliy
Bisiy
Theoxenium
Endispoytropium
Heracles
Iley

* First month of the calendar year.
The Doric names are different, but within themselves they are surprisingly uniform. Carney and hyacinthia, related to the ancient Doric festivals, are almost everywhere. The same is true of Pedageitnia, Badromia, and Theudeisia. The first two, although placed in different places, are the same names as the Attic-Ionian metageitnia and boedromium, and badromium or boedromium correspond in meaning to the Delphic boatoi. But, since they occupy different places in the calendar, it is difficult to assume that they were borrowed at Delphi so late - in the 8th or 7th century. And finally, Doric Agrianium, which is found in Aegina, Sparta, Rhodes, Kos, Kalymnos and Byzantium, is not found anywhere else, except for Thebes and three other cities of Boeotia (Cheronea, Libadeia, Oropos). Similarly, the feast of Agriania is known only in Boeotia and Argos (see Vol. I, pp. 192-193) and it is clear that it came to Argos from Boeotia. In Argos he contacted the Proitis, who repeated the Miniades from Orchomenus, and Melampus, who was descended from Minius (see Vol. I, p. 222). Where and when did this name of the month appear in the Doric calendar? Not in Argos, because that would not explain its widespread use in other Dorian communities. Most likely, the Dorians borrowed it from Boeotia before they entered the Peloponnese.
If the Attic-Ionian and Doric calendars go back to a common source in Boeotia, their origin should be attributed to the Minoan period. This puts before us next question. What is the relationship between the Boeotian and Delphic calendars? We do not know what to answer to this, because the materials on Boeotia have been preserved only in fragments. If the calendars date back to the Minoan age, then there is no reason to give Delphi precedence over Thebes and Orchomenus. All we can say with certainty is that both the Attic-Ionian and Doric calendars derive from a prehistoric original located in central Greece.
If we accept this hypothesis, it will immediately provide us with the connection with the East that we were looking for. Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, was a Phoenician connected through Europe with Minos of Knossos. It should be remembered that Europa was abducted from Phenicia by Zeus in the form of a bull, and that in one of the religious texts from Ugarit it is reported how the bull-god El was united with the mother goddess Asherat (see vol. I, pp. 376-377).
If the Greek calendar was of Minoan origin, how, one might ask, is it that only one name of the month is mentioned in Hesiod's Works and Days, a poem dedicated to the annual cycle of agricultural work, and none of the months is mentioned at all by Homer? As regards Hesiod, the answer is "this: because of the Greek system of intercalation, which will be discussed in the next paragraph, the calendar names of the months were useless for his purpose, which was to prescribe the exact time of the year when the husbandman should proceed to various jobs. This could only be done by referring to the solar year as it is revealed in the annual movement of the stars. As far as Homer is concerned, it would be a mistake to assume, as Nilsson did, that the Greeks of Homeric times had no names for the months simply because these names are not mentioned in the Homeric poems. Since the goal of the epic poets was to present an idealized picture of the heroic past, they avoided any mention of those institutions that had only a local or short-term significance; and on this basis references to the calendar were excluded, for the names of the months were different in different cities. *
In Works and Days we find some confirmation of the hypothesis that the Greek calendars, as we know them, come from prehistoric Boeotia; but before proceeding to this subject, we must disassemble the Greek system of insertion into the calendar.

11.01.2016

The ancient Greek calendar is a calculus system used in ancient Greece and neighboring states in the first millennium BC. This calendar is currently not in use. Any wall calendars familiar to us, desktop, flip and pocket calendars represent the Gregorian calculus, adopted several centuries later than the Hellenic.

What is the ancient Greek calendar

Sunny- moon calendar, used by the ancient Greeks, was created taking into account astronomical cycles. The year consisted of 12 months, oriented to the lunar cycle. Each month contained 29 or 30 days, the year was equal to 354 days. Approximately once every three years, another month was added.

The calendar of the ancient Greeks was corrected several times. A cycle of 8 years was introduced, in which an extra month was inserted at 3, 5 and 8 years. The 8-year cycle was first introduced in Athens in 594 BC, the idea belonged to the politician and poet Solon. Approximately 50 years later, the astronomer Meton suggested using a more accurate 19-year cycle, which had 7 intercalated months. The new style was put into use for quite some time; later decided to abandon its use.

Features of use

The inconvenience of the ancient Greek system was that in each city the inhabitants used their own calendar and their own names of the months. Usually they coincided with the names of the holidays that were celebrated in this month.

In theory, each new moon was supposed to give rise to a new month, but in practice this did not happen every time, which introduced confusion and forced the use of such terms as “lunar new moon” and “civil”. Thus, the astronomical calendar diverged from the public one.

Confusion arose with the beginning of the year. According to the calendar of Athens, the first new moon after the summer solstice was considered the beginning of the year, according to the calendar of the city of Thebes (the Boeotian calendar), the year began after the winter solstice. The Boeotian calendar was closest to the modern Gregorian system.

The Hellenic chronology was based on traditional Greek sports competitions - the Olympic Games. Competitions were held every 4 years in the city of Olympia and took on the character of folk celebrations. The opening of the games was timed to the beginning of the year. The beginning of the ancient Greek chronology refers exactly to the year of the first Olympic Games.

The harmonious names of the Hellenic months - Poseidon, Hecatombeon, Elaphebolion, etc. - are now almost forgotten. People use the Gregorian calendar, which is more accurate in terms of astronomy and easier to use. This system of calculating time is firmly established in the public mind. Each of us uses calendars - this is an affordable and useful device.

The printing industry has reached an unprecedented development in recent decades. Today printing of calendars has become a quick and relatively inexpensive event.

ChronicleThe Roman calendar set the official
and the religious basis of the 12-month year,
which lasted 355 days until
The Julian calendar was introduced.

Short review

Caesar's Julian calendar was based on
mathematical and astronomical calculations
Greek world, where Egyptian and
Babylonian patterns. Caesar's successor, Augustus,
demonstrated his vast erudition,
installing large public solar panels in Rome
a clock that used an obelisk as an arrow.
Here the Roman fascination with eastern astronomy
merged with the assumption that the reign
August was predetermined by the divine cycle.

Sundial

Time and calendar

The Roman year was governed by calendars which
determine the days that are suitable and not suitable for
social activities, religious holidays and
other events. There was also an 8 day weekly cycle,
which in public view
calendars were designated by letters from A to H. Over time
time, this civil calendar began strongly
diverge from the natural solar year. Julius
Caesar rectified this by making 46 B.C. 445 days and
then entering the julian calendar which was based
on precise astronomical calculations and still
used Orthodox Church.

Time and calendar (2)

The Julian calendar was not enough
accurate and gave an error of 1 day in 128 years. In 1582
the spring equinox has moved back by (1582325)/128 = 10 days. Because of the importance of this holiday
for Christendom, the Catholic Church was
convinced of the need for calendar reform.
The next Pope, who came in 1572, is Gregory
XIII reformed the calendar on February 24, 1582.
(all Christians were commanded to count October 5
1582 - 15 October). The calendar is named
Gregorian.

Time and calendar (3)

The Romans, like the Greeks, dated events by years.
board of consuls (in turn, the Greeks -
magistrates). It could also indicate the exact date
which was measured from the founding of Rome in 753 to
AD To determine the time, both night and day were
divided into 12 equal hours. Because
the length of the day depended on the date and on
geographic latitude, in different seasons and in different
places, the hours were also of different lengths in the solar
Mediterranean.

Year numbering

In ancient Greece every year in every city
had its name after the chief official
this year - in Athens by the first archon, in Sparta
according to the first ephor, etc. Also the names of the months in
each city had its own.
When the Romans come to replace the Greeks, they have everything
same: years are not numbered, but are indicated by names
officials (“to the consulate of such and such”).

Chronological tables

Real chronological
tables that were
Greeks and Romans, looked like
long lists of names - like
phone books. For example,
"To the archonship of Kalliad... to
archonship of Euthyn... in
archonship of Herond.

Time

The Greeks imagined time moving on
one place - like a starry firmament, which
revolves over the world in the same and unchanging way.
For the Greek, progress, if it ever existed, was at one time
in an immemorial beginning, under the titan Prometheus, and after
this life seemed eternal, stable and
unchanged and all the years similar to each other.

Facts lie

Information where they write: “The Greeks so honored the Olympic
games that led their calendar according to the Olympics” is erroneous. Because some people kept track of time for the Olympics
Greek historians to keep track of a long series of events.
But it was their armchair fiction, and nothing more. None
document, there were no such dates in any of the inscriptions. The Greeks did not
reckoning for the Olympics, they did not conduct any
chronology. Years in their minds were as if scattered
motley motionless scattering.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. Greece, which consisted of separate city-states (polises), was under the cultural influence of many countries of the East. The ancient Greeks colonized neighboring islands and coasts from Asia Minor to southern Italy and even the northern shores of the Black Sea. And those of them who swam, and those who were engaged in agriculture, needed certain knowledge, they needed a calendar,

For the timely implementation of agricultural work, the ancient Greeks coordinated their lives with the change of seasons, with the visible annual movement of the Sun across the sky. That is why already in the poems of Homer (VIII century BC) it is testified that the ancient Greeks had the concept of a solar year, although ... there is no evidence that they used solar calendars at that time. It can only be argued that already somewhere in the IX century. BC e. The ancient Greeks knew how the appearance of the starry sky changes in rhythm with the change of seasons. They used this annually repeated change in the visibility of individual groups of stars and constellations in everyday life as a kind of solar calendar.

This is confirmed by the advice that the poet Hesiod (8th century BC) gave to rural workers:

“Start harvesting when the Pleiades rise, and plowing when they are about to set. When Sirius is overhead, cut trees. Arcturus appears in the evening - cut the vines. Orion and Sirius go to the middle of the sky - pick grapes. Fifty days after the solstice, goods can be transported by sea for sale ... With the setting of Orion and the Pleiades, the year is completed.

As can be seen, the beginnings of specific field work are clearly compared with the view of the starry sky. In particular, the sickle should be taken during the first morning (heliacal) rise of the Pleiades (for the time of Hesiod at the latitude of Greece, this is about May 12 according to the modern calendar), when the Pleiades set at dawn (early November), it is time to plow. At the end of February, when the star Arcturus rises from the sea in the evening, the vines must be pruned, etc.

Moments of the morning and evening sunrises and sunsets of several of the most remarkable stars, at the latitude of Athens in 501 BC. e. and 300 AD e. are given in table.

Table. Rise and set of "calendar" stars at the latitude of Athens according to the Gregorian calendar

	BC e. (-)	Evening	Morning	Evening	Morning
Alcyone
Betelgeuse
(α Orionis)
(α Bootes)

It is easy to see that due to the precession, the visibility conditions of specific stars and their groups are continuously changing. Therefore, in our time, the advice of Hesiod can no longer be used ...

"... In days and months - with the Moon"

As the ancient Greek scholar of the 1st c. before. n. e. Gemin in his "Elements of Astronomy", the Greeks had to make sacrifices to their gods according to the customs of their ancestors, and therefore "they must maintain agreement with the Sun in years, and with the Moon in days and months." Indeed, in their business and social life, the Greeks used lunisolar calendars. The names of the months of these calendars usually came from the names of the festivals celebrated in the corresponding month. So, the Athenians in the first month of their calendar solemnly sacrificed one hundred bulls - “hecatomb”, therefore the month was called Hecatomveon. On the first day of it, civil servants took office, on the 12th day there were holidays dedicated to the god Chronos, who personified time. On the seventh day of the third month - Voidromion - a holiday was celebrated in honor of Apollo Voidromius - "helping in the battle with a cry", and the day before the Greeks honored the dead. In the month of Pianepsion on the 7th day, the Greeks celebrated the feast of grapes, on the 10-14th - a women's holiday, on the 28th day in every fourth year there were Hephaestias accompanied by a torchlight procession - festivities in honor of Hephaestus - the god of fire and blacksmithing, the next two days and were the holidays of blacksmiths. On the eighth month - Anfestirion - the feast of the beginning of the pouring of new wine (“small dionysias”) fell, the corresponding “feast of flowers” ​​event was called Anfestiria. Marriages took place in the month of Hamilion.

The most famous were the Athenian and Macedonian lunisolar calendars. The first of them, in particular, was used by Greek astronomers, the second became widespread in the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Here is an approximate correspondence between the months of the Athenian (left), Macedonian and our calendars:

According to some sources, the ancient Greeks originally began their year around the winter solstice. Then its beginning was moved to the summer solstice, since meetings usually took place at this time, at which officials were elected.

The day of the ancient Greeks began at sunset and consisted of night and the day following it. The days of the month were divided into three decades (such a division is already found in Hesiod). The first 10 days were simply counted - from the first to the tenth, the next 9 were called “first”, “second”, etc. with the addition of the words “after ten”, the remaining days were counted in reverse order: “ninth from the end of the month”, “eighth from the end of the month ”, etc. The 30th day was called“ old and new ”, and the previous 29th was“ anticipatory ”; in a month consisting of 29 days, it was excluded from the account.

The name of the 30th day has a deep meaning. In the count of days, the Greeks, as it were, "broke away" from observations: they considered the next day to be the 1st day of the new calendar month, regardless of whether the crescent of the moon is visible in the sky or not (after all, in autumn at the latitude of Athens it can be seen only on the third day after the conjunction ).

It is noteworthy that the ancient Greeks on each day of the month honored one or more gods, to whom this day was dedicated. In Athens, in particular, the first and last day of each month was dedicated to Hekate, a goddess who was first considered the patroness of human affairs, later the goddess of ghosts, nightmares, the mistress of shadows in underworld, sometimes she was identified with the moon goddess Selene. The 1st day of the month was also dedicated to Apollo and Hermes, the 3rd, 13th and 23rd days - to Athena. Three last days of each month were considered unlucky, they were dedicated to the dead, as well as to the underground gods.

In Gemin we also find some information about the structure of the ancient Greek lunisolar calendars: "For business and social life, the duration of the monthly period was rounded up to 291/2 days, so that two months were 59 days." The calendar year consisted of 12 months. To harmonize the duration of the civil year with the solar year, according to Geminus, "the ancients inserted an additional month (in Athens it was usually the winter Posideon) every year." This means that the Greeks at that time used the trieteris, the most primitive two-year lunar cycle. How long this lasted, how the Greeks brought their lunar calendar into harmony with the solar one, is unknown.

Another piece of evidence about ancient Greek calendars comes from Herodotus (484-425 B.C.): "The Greeks inserted a month in every second or third year for the (correspondence) of the seasons." Apparently, it is already talking about the use by the Greeks of an 8-year cycle - octaetherides, which was allegedly introduced in Greece by the poet and politician Solon (640-560 BC) in 593 BC. e.

In fact, information about the reform carried out at that time is very contradictory. Plutarch (46-126) about Solon says this: “Noticing the inequality of the month and the fact that the movement of the Moon is not consistent with either the sunset or the sunrise, but often on the same day the Moon catches up with the Sun and moves away from it, he decided call this day “old and new”, assuming that part of this day before the conjunction (of the Moon with the Sun) belongs to the expiring month, the rest of the beginning.

The writer Diogenes Laertius (1st half of the 3rd century BC) limited himself to the statement that Solon ordered the Athenians to count the days according to the moon. According to the philosopher Proclus (410-485), before Solon, the Greeks did not seem to know at all that lunar months do not always have 30 days.

Apparently, Solon coordinated the calendar with the Moon by inserting additional days, and possibly not by the Sun, throwing out the intercalated month to bring the beginning lunar year to the summer solstice. It is possible, of course, that he actually introduced octaetheride. The embolismic years were the 1st and 3rd years of the odd Olympiad and the 2nd year of the even Olympiad.

It would seem that, observing the phases of the same Moon, the same neomeni, the citizens of different policies would have to start counting the day in months from the same days (another thing is that the months themselves could be called differently). But this was just not the case. Partly, apparently, because the system of octaetherides was not accepted then everywhere, and it “worked” still poorly. As a result, as Plutarch noted, there was no agreement between the individual calendars in counting days in months. We confine ourselves to just one example. Describing one of the events of the war of 431-421. BC e., Aristotle's student Aristoxenus (however, more than a hundred years later) wrote that at that time "the tenth day of the month among the Corinthians corresponded to the fifth day among the Athenians and the eighth according to some other calendar." Apparently, this particular day corresponded to the 7th or 8th day of the moon, but in Athens the calendar was two or three days behind the change in the phases of the moon, while in Corinth it was ahead of it ...

One can therefore understand the great enthusiasm with which in 432 BC. e. during the Olympic Games, the discovery of the astronomer Meton was met. Meton derived a relationship connecting the tropical year with the synodic month, and also calculated and compared on special tables the change of annual risings and sets of stars with the change in the phases of the moon in a 19-year cycle. These tables were carved on stone slabs and installed in city squares for all to see. Such a stone calendar is called a parapegma.

Praise of the parapegma

The very word "parapegma" means "to attach", "to stick". But what relation it has to calendars was established only in 1902, when fragments of such a parapegma were found during excavations of a theater in the city of Miletus (a former Greek colony on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor). One of its fragments is shown in Fig.

Rice. Fragment of the ancient Greek calendar-parapegma

Here you can see the inscriptions arranged in rows, to the left of which, as well as between them, there are a number of holes, there are 30 of them on the right column. To better understand the principle of this calendar, let's number all the holes, putting numbers in front of the lines (they are not on the monument). The inscriptions say the following:

1 O Sun in Aquarius 2 O Leo begins to set at dawn and Lyra sets O O 5 O Swan sets at evening dawn OOOOOOOOOOO 15 O Andromeda begins to rise at dawn in the morning O O 18 O Aquarius begins to rise in the middle 19 O Pegasus begins to rise at dawn in the morning O 21 O Centaur sets entirely in the morning 22 O Hydra sets entirely in the morning 23 O Whale sets at evening dawn 24 O Arrow sets, bringing Zephyr (spring) time O O O O 29 O Full swan sets at evening dawn 30 O Arcturus rises at evening dawn

An analysis of these inscriptions shows that we are talking about a change in the conditions for the visibility of the rising and setting of stars in Greece during the passage of the Sun through the constellation Aquarius. The left side of the table obviously spoke of similar phenomena occurring thirty days earlier. It can be assumed that there were six such tables in total, and each was “painted” for 61 days. The duration of one year in the metonic cycle is on average 6940:19 = 365.26 days. During this time, Meton believed, the Sun passes through 12 zodiac constellations, lingering in each of them for 365.26:12 = 30.4 days.

So, on the parapegma, the civil lunisolar calendar was compared with changes in the appearance of the starry sky during the solar year and with the corresponding change in the seasons. Let us try, following Meton, to "set into motion" the fragment of the parapegma at our disposal. Suppose that in the year that we take as the initial one (we will call it conditionally the first year of the cycle), the new moon (or neomenia) took place at the moment when “The entire Swan sets at evening dawn”, corresponding to hole 29. Insert a pin into this hole with number 1, into the next hole (30) - with the number 2, etc. These will be the calendar numbers of the lunar month of this year. Similarly, after 29 and 30 days, the same pins will be installed on other tables (including the left side of the parapegma and the upper part of the right side). Thus, the change in the appearance of the starry sky (not so clearly conspicuous!) Will be compared with a well-observed phenomenon - the change in the phases of the moon. Somewhere on one of the tables it will be recorded on what date and which lunar month “In the morning the Pleiades rise”, announcing the harvest time ...

After 12 lunar months, the same new moon will come 11 days earlier. Therefore, in the next, second year of the 19-year cycle, the same month will begin when the “Aquarian middle rises” - hole 18 (=29-11). Consequently, all the pins with the numbers of days must be moved 11 positions back in the holes. On the third year of the cycle, the beginning of the month moves back another 11 days (on this fragment of the parapegma, it will fall on the hole 18-11 = 7). Accordingly, we rearrange all the pins with the numbers of days. During these two years, the beginning of the month has moved back by 11 11 = 22 days. Therefore, in the third year, the insertion of the 13th month will be made. As a result, with the beginning of the month in the fourth year, the pin will move forward 30-11 = 19 days - into the hole 7 + 19 = 26. In general, the numbers of the holes of this parapegma fragment, corresponding to the beginning of the lunar month in subsequent years of the 19-year lunar cycle, can be written in tabular form:

After 19 years, the cycle is completely repeated. What is interesting here is the following. There are holes on the parapegma fragment corresponding to 30 days. Meanwhile, as can be seen from the tablet, if the Metonic cycle were perfectly accurate, the new moon could occur only in 19 of them. These days can be somehow distinguished, for example, by gilding the corresponding holes and writing in gold numbers next to each of them the number of the year in the 19-year cycle, in which the lunar month is counted from this hole (corresponding to a certain position of the stars in the sky!) If this is done, then it's okay that the pins fell out of the hole during the transportation of the parapegma, or that inquisitive boys rearranged them for fun at night. Remembering the number of the year in the 19-year cycle, we will immediately find places (holes) for the first days of the months, after which it is not difficult to establish all the others.

A perennial herbaceous plant that blooms in early spring, before the leaves appear. The flowers are large, broadly bell-shaped, light purple, at the beginning