>>19689924 lb

the chronology, as given and accepted, is wrong. As so much else we are taught.

The "holy land" area of the Biblical references was around the Black Sea and Constantinople, not Palestine?

ABSTRACT on Ptolemy

http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/PTOLFOM.htm

There are lots of detected anomalies in the works of Claudius Ptolemy, the greatest ancient cosmographist of obscure curriculum. I am discussing 2 such anomalies here.

1. INTRODUCTION

Anatoly (Timofeevich) Fomenko, correspondent member of the famous Moscow Academy and Department leader at Moscow State University (Differential Geometry) is not exactly popular amongst historians. His New Chronology states that the majority opinion about History is erroneous before XIVth century: between AD 700 & 1300 most "historical events" are falsifications; but those events belonging to Classical Antiquity which are not again falsifications, happened in the above period. And then we absolutely do not know about historical events before 700 AD.

Rather strange a picture. However, Fomenko has some arguments, mathematical, physical & astronomical. These are generally ignored by historians, and in exchange he ignores most historical arguments telling that historical sources may have been falsified.

I made some Comments to this controversy ([1]-[3], and also from another viewpoint, [4]), with practically no echo. Now I have chosen a small detail of the problem: the stellar catalog in the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemaeus. I take the opportunity to mention tangentionally another Ptolemy problem too, about geographical longitudes. There is nothing common in the two "anomalies"; only both are rather strange and maybe if one gets a good explanation, the other ceases to be an anomaly as well.

Today the opinion of the majority of historians is that Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, and his activity is centered about 150 AD. In contrast Fomenko's opinion (see e.g. [5], [6] & [7]) is that the author of Almagest worked somewhere between 600 & 1300, probably near to the upper bound. If the majority opinion is true, then the anomaly mentioned by Fomenko must have an explanation, absent up to now, and even its abstract existence a matter of faith. On the other hand, if Fomenko is right, then all authors referring Ptolemy up to, say, 1000 are falsifications. It is hard to accept any of the two horns of the alternative.

https://chronologia.org/en/old_books/old_maps.html

>>19689881 pb

>>19690226

1. THE MYSTERIOUS KING OF ASTRONOMERS

According to the majority opinion of historians Ptolemy was the greatest astronomer of Classical Antiquity, who incorporated his forerunners' works into a congenial construction which had no real opponents until Copernicus and which had to be put away only because the works of Galileo & Newton. What is interesting, he did not live at the end of Antiquity (say, about 400 AD), in which case the collapse of Antiquity would explain the lack of followers, but also not in the classical age of the Alexandria Research Center (put to 330-200 BC by van der Waerden [8], for example), but in an otherwise boring period. The educated guess of History is Alexandria, c.100-178 AD.

Of course, the date is self-consistent. E.g. Ptolemy uses Hipparchus (IInd century BC) and is cited by Pappos of Alexandria (c.320 AD). Also, one of Ptolemy's works, the Geographika, may be helped by the long peace of the Roman Empire in the IInd c. AD. (His extant works are the Geographika, collecting the ancient geographical informations, the Almagest, originally Syntaxis Mathematika, collecting ancient astronomy, and the Tetrabiblon, collecting ancient astrology.) But look: he collects the knowledge about ancient Earth and Sky in 150 AD, and practically nothing happens afterwards until the Arabs take Alexandria in 641!

There is a commonplace explanation, which I cite from I. Asimov, biochemist, science fiction writer and science history writer [9], who tells that all Greek science started to decline after 200 BC, because Greeks left natural philosophy for rhetorics and such: Greek science exhibited symptoms of very serious decline well before Christ. If so, then Ptolemy is alone in a desert of centuries; then History of Science should give some explanation for his excellence.

There is, of course, another explanation for the decline of science in Alexandria. The Alexandria Research Center was founded by the first Ptolemy Kings as a Library. Their motives to found it may not be completely known for us, but clearly royal prestige, diplomacy and collection of practical information were among them. For example, Egypt of the Ptolemys and Asia of the Antigonids (both Macedonians) concurred to show the Greeks that they are their natural leaders (and later the Attalids of Pergamum copied the idea of a Library). Now, a Library can operate as a Research Center only if it gets a high enough annual budget. Later Ptolemaids may have lost their interest in the Library among their internecine wars. And finally, when Rome took over in 31 BC, Alexandria ceased to be a royal capitol. Why to support the Research Center from faraway Rome?

https://chronologia.org/en/old_books/old_maps.html

>>19690275

>>19690226

A simple explanation for a decline starting c.200 BC. But then why Ptolemy, the Astronomer, is in floribus c. 150 AD?

The end of the Library is also obscure. There is a popular theory that Iulius Caesar's Alexandria battles are responsible for the burning of the Library in 46 BC. Even more popular is the theory originating from French Enlightement that the Alexandria Christian Church is responsible, which organized the lynching of great Hypatia (beautiful, charming, author of scholarly commentaries, nice behaviour in all-male scientific community [8] and everything as you want, although as for the nice behaviour see App. A…). According to the ecclesiastic history of Socrates the mob of the city, under the influence of Bishop Cyril or at least of turbulent monks, killed her with chips of ceramics (or by another interpretation, by shells) in 415. However Theodosius the Great closed down the non-Christian temples in 393, and the Library, as a Museum, was the temple of the Muses, so it is rather nontrivial how it may have existed in 415.

Still, there are also stories about the Moslim conquerors heating the public baths of Alexandria for 8 months in 641. Finally, Islamic Internet sites sometimes mention that the Alexandria Library was demolished by the Crusaders. My guess (and some experiences of mine about central falsification of history are related to those of Fomenko, albeit not identical) is that in the last 2000 years any and all ideologies accused their oppositions with harming the Alexandria Library.

So, while the 150 AD datum is possible for Ptolemy's work, we could imagine other data as well. Melanchton's opposite opinion will come soon.

Now, there is some anomaly about the Astronomer. Maybe his original name was Greek: Klaudios Ptolemaios; its canonical Latin translation is Claudius Ptolemaeus. The problem is: why Klaudios and if so, why Ptolemaios?

Ptolemaios is a Greek/Macedonian name. In earlier centuries a kin of the Ptolemy Kings of Alexandria may have accumulated substantial research funds and then his authorship of 3 big compilations would get automatic explanation. But not after 31 BC.

As far as we know the royal Ptolemy family was extinct in 31 BC, and even in wider sense in the time of Nero. Of course very far kins may have remained in Egypt, or possibly Klaudios came from a disjoint Ptolemy family. Another idea is that maybe he was the citizen of the only Greek polis in Egypt, Ptolemais at Thebes. (Alexandria was not in Egypt, only adjacent to.) But anyways: he has the family name of Kings of Alexandria & Egypt while his given name is par excellence Latin!

Klaudios was not a Greek given name. It was purely Roman. Sure, between 41 & 54 AD a hyperloyal Alexandria family may have given the name of the actual Roman Emperor; but a hyperloyal family would not use the name of an Emperor dead for half a century. By other words, an individual born in Alexandria about 100 AD as Klaudios Ptolemaios is highly improbable. Of course probability considerations are irrelevant if the individual is well documented. If…

And finally let us see Martin Luther's right hand man and chief scientific advisor, Melanchton. He organised the first printed edition of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (the astrological book), to which he wrote a Postscript in 1553 (you can check it in a modern edition [10]). Now, here Melanchton tells that "when the Saracen barbarism … destroyed … the Alexandria Academy", the science of Astrology would have been lost unless "not much before the Saracen incursion" Ptolemy had compiled the full Science of Astrology. So Melanchton's opinion is that Ptolemy lived in centuries VI or VII AD.

1. "PTOLEMY'S CRIME"?

This title comes from Newton (but not I. but R. R.), whose book has the title "The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy" [11]. His claim goes back to Delambre (1819) who believed that Ptolemy fabricated some solar eclipse data without observing the eclipses. I cannot decide if Ptolemy falsified or not and do not want to.

Another accusations from the 80's tell that Ptolemy's Stellar Catalog contains a lot of stars whose positions he did not observe. The idea is the following. Hipparchus discovered the precession. Then Ptolemy calculated that the precession between Hipparchus and himself must be 2°40', and for a lot of stars he simply took Hipparchus' positions + this precession shift while he declared that he reobserved them. The modern authors claim that they detected this practice from anomalous distribution of measurement errors + lack of any peculiar motion (which did not exist in Greek theory) + the incorrect value of precession. The literature is big, not unequivocal but fairly convincing.

So a lot of authors claim that many observations of Ptolemy are some kind of falsifications.

ABSTRACT on Ptolemy

http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/PTOLFOM.htm

https://chronologia.org/en/old_books/old_maps.html

Strange case of Ptolemy.

https://secwww.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/Content/techdigest/pdf/APL-V16-N02/APL-16-02-Newton.pdf

Newton had issues.

Newton believed History was falsified.

>>19690299

>>19690275

>>19690226

>>19690349

Bun on Ptolemy; questions on irreconcilable things we are supposed to believe if we accept the official story of [chronology of] History, etc,.

>>19690305

Will there be a battle for "Jerusalem" ?

( where's it's claimed / really the location of ancient city mentioned in the Bible; or not?)

>>19690430

There's a lot of rumors, apparently. No solid date of when it even happened.

If I were to guess, it never happened. But it was convenient to tell everyone it was gone; Like a fake death for insurance money, or to escape a vendetta.

keke

>>19690532

>>19690430

kinda like the "shredded document" file, a journalist told me about. He said those are kept.

>>19690544

Seems they extended the historical narrative, and had to fill in space, since they expanded the total length of what was (allegedly) known.

So there may have been less than 14 plagues. Or less than 5 Crusades. Something like that.

Trojan War may have been same event as others described elsewhere?