An international group of astronomers looked for astronomical clues in the work, and came to the conclusion that the solar eclipse hinted at in the story of Odysseus' return home about a decade after his participation in the battle of the fall of Troy occurred on April 16, 1178 BC
Homer's Odyssey describes the journey of a Greek general named Odysseus who took ten years to return home after the battle that ended with the fall of the city of Troy. The story full of rich descriptions ignited the imagination of writers and screenwriters. Due to its antiquity it seems that everything that can be learned from this beautiful legend has already been learned, but now an analysis of celestial events described in the Odyssey indicates that Homer recorded a total solar eclipse.
Odysseus fought in the Battle of Troy which is estimated to have taken place around 1200 BC. After the battle, he must find his way to Ithaca in Greece, and his journey home is a heroic journey in which he is captured by the nymph Calypso, adrift on a barge in the sea, fights cyclops, resists the temptations of sirens and generally has a hard life. While he is away, his wife Peloponi lives in his house, and 108 suitors try to convince her to declare her husband dead and carry one of them. Near the end of the story, a prophet named Theoclymanus predicts the death of all the suitors and says:
"Poor people, what horror is this that overwhelms you so much? The night will envelop your heads, your faces, and until the blessing - mournful cries will burst into the sky - the cheeks will flow with tears - the walls and squares will be full of blood. Ghosts, look, thronged the entrances, thronged the courtyard, marched down to the realm of death and darkness. The sun is blotted out in the sky - look there, a deadly fog is spreading over the entire land." (Free translation from the English quote. AB)
The reference to the sun being erased from the sky on the day of Odysseus' return home to claim it back and slaughter the suitors was for a long time considered to refer to a solar eclipse that actually occurred, but the issue was debated among astronomers, historians and classicists until it was finally decided that there was not enough evidence in the book to point to a specific date for the event.
An analysis conducted by Marcelo Magnescu, head of the Mathematical Physics Laboratory at Rockefeller University, and Constantino Bicosis of the Projecto Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, reveals that there is enough evidence. If their interpretation of the event is correct, they place the eclipse on April 16, 1178 BC. The two reported their findings in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
It turns out that there are four clues in Odysseus, each of which individually occurs quite often, but combining them in a short period of time is rare. When Odysseus makes his way home on a barge he uses the constellations in the sky to navigate: the Bear Shepherd (Bootes) and the Pleiades, which appear in the sky together only in March and September. The moon is new when Odysseus returns home and on that day Venus rose before sunrise, which can only happen in the first third of the lunar month. The most important clue, is that Homer refers to the god Hermes flying west to the island of Ogygia about a month earlier. This reference is apparently to the planet Mercury, which appears low in the sky and experiences a backward movement in the sky relative to the star background once every 116 days.
According to Magnescu, "not only does this strengthen the evidence that this date must be important, but if we take it as a given that the death of the suitors occurred on the day when a particular solar eclipse occurred, then all the other descriptions in the Odyssey occurred as described.
Bicosis and Moganasco analyzed all 1,684 new moons between 1250 and 1125 BC using commercial astronomical software and found that the appropriate date for the conjunction of astronomical events was April 16, 1178 BC. Assuming that Homer adapted the story to events that occurred in reality, this can help astronomers date the fall of Troy and show that this great poetry may also include and encourage a fondness for astronomy.
7 תגובות
The scripture here related to me the story known from our scriptures of "the sun in Gibeon Dom and the moon in the valley of Ayalon" (Joshua chapter XNUMX). Here too it can be attributed to some kind of solar eclipse and accurately record the date of the battle with the five Amorite kings.
Our sages dealt a lot with this miracle which they explained mainly simply:- The sun stopped!. I wonder what Rabbi Nachman Farkash, the first commenter, would say about the explanation of our sages to the above verses as they appear in the following context:
http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/Tanach/melech/10-2.htm
Would he have also defined them as "this whole book is a plaster creation of Akham and wonder about the lengths of the atar that are required for this kind of literature"??,
of course not.
I wonder if anyone has taken on the challenge of dating a possible solar eclipse of this kind as is done in the article here.
Good Day
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Hanan:
Was proof needed for this?
Hasmaba contains the name of Yaron London.
And this is real and tested - not just speculation.
Does it mean anything?
Does it allow us to know something more about the world?
As I mentioned - you can do a similar thing with Harry Potter as well (and by the way - you can really draw real conclusions from Harry Potter! For example, the fact that there are humans and even among them there are those who are not wizards!)
With a similar method, they found out that Jesus was born before AD
If you read carefully what I wrote, I stated that: "This only proves the power of masterpieces in history as being able to contain actual hysterical descriptions." - Pay attention to the argument "as if they could"....
The matter of proof refers to the power of ancient works, as those that may describe (and in my opinion do describe) actual events in many cases.
Hanan:
With all due respect, this does not prove anything.
The entire study actually claims that if the work refers to a solar eclipse, then it is a certain eclipse, but there is not even a shred of proof that this is what actually happened - only that it is possible.
I suppose a similar thing could be done with Harry Potter.
It just goes to show the power of masterpieces in history to be able to contain actual hysterical depictions.
And probably not just Homer. Many ancient writings mentioned various astronomical and physical events, which only nowadays are beginning to understand that they are not a literary invention, but a faithful explanation to the spirit of the time of various phenomena. Various descriptions were also in the Mahabharata, in the external books of the Tanakh, in ancient historical reviews, etc.
Hanan Sabat
http://WWW.EURA.ORG.IL
This whole book is the creation of a band-aid and I wonder about the lengths of the atar that are required for this lousy literature.