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Sun and Moon Eclipses in Ancient Egypt

The following message was posted to the Guardian's discussion board:

From Ossama Alsaadawi: Posted on Saturday, July 27, 2002 - 01:04 pm:

Hi Rick,

Ancient Egyptians were pioneers in astronomy and astrology. I learned basics of these two sciences from some old Egyptian etymological papers even before I studied high mathematics. In fact, the 24 hours famous AE trip, explained by Wallis budge and others, is an astrological tool.

For example they say if one wants to know his ascendant then he calculates it like this:

If he is born near the dawn then his ascendant is the same as his sun-sign.

If he is born nearly two hours after dawn then his ascendant is the sign next to his sun-sign.

If he is born nearly two hours before dawn then his ascendant is the sign prior to his sun-sign.

If he is born near to sunset then he adds 6 signs to his sun-signs.

It means you add one sign for each two-hour increment.

Their unique and highly accurate calendar enabled them to calculate exactly the moon phases by very simple estimation. Their sun motion was also synchronized with seasons and stars. Therefore, they were able to estimate eclipses easily even if they didn’t see it.

As I explained before, they pictured eclipses in variety of ways and I published some figures for that. It means that eclipses were quite known for them. The figures are so accurate that it reflects wide and intense astronomical knowledge. They also knew the vast effect of eclipses on mankind and earth.

I used their simple method to estimate accurately eclipses up to 26000 years BC. I published some important eclipses in one of my books.

In my system I used year (zero) as an origin of estimation while the Julian calendar denied it. Julian calendar assumes that there is year 1AD and year 1BC but there is no year (zero). This is not correct since any coordinate system must have (0) origin or reference point. However, this is not a problem since one can subtract (1) from my results to get the Julian equivalent year.

The Julian year included a great error (1day) every 128 years until Pope Gregory13 (1584AD) corrected the calendar up to year 1999.

Only the Japanese and myself warned that if we don’t follow Gregorian calendar in year 2000 the error would increase dramatically. That what happened when all countries ignored this warning and estimated February 2000 to be 29 days instead of 28 days in accordance with Gregorian calendar. The result is instead of diminishing the error from 4 hours to three hours the error increased to 28 hours. It means that our local estimated sun is now far 28 hours from the true astro ecliptic sun. If we continue this way man has to make a second major correction after few centuries.

Kind regards,
Ossama Alsaadawi