I’m generally wary of any schemes that suggest that the mathematics of Solar System cycles show evidence of “Intelligent Design”. Such schemes often invoke the golden ratio Phi and purport it to be the ratio between Solar Year and Venus Orbital Period, although it really isn’t, and we actually have to out of way to get anything like Phi proper to have anything to do with it.
I insist that those of us who “crunch the numbers” are in an excellent position to know better than such proposals, because to the best of my knowledge, it will take quite a bit of hard work on our parts to make a multi-planet calendar work out just because the numbers involved don’t just magically fall into place as if by “Intelligent Design”.
(In fact, we might also ask questions like how do we know that a Supreme Deity opts to work in base 10 in the first place, but then again the numbers do speak for themselves well enough that we can probably just skip that).
That being said, there is after all a sense of some kind of order in the mathematical machinations of the Solar System. There’s a relatively high rate of recycling of astronomical constants that appears to be applicable.
Just the other day I had occasion to remember this one
Mars Synodic Period 779.96 d / Saturn Synodic Period 378.09 d = 2.062895078 = 1.719079232 x (12/10)
Which of course bears great resemblance to the Royal Cubit in Imperial or as ratio, and which may have entered the lexicon of architect-astronomers such as Senenmut, much earlier on as the Lunar-Solar Year ratio
Solar Year 365.25 d / Lunar Year 354.367 d = 2.061422198 / 2 = 1.71785183 x (6/10)
These formulas actually work with the now-standard values for these cycles and for the Royal Cubit
Mars Synodic Period 779.2727238 / (1.718873385 x 12) = Saturn Synodic Period 377.8020801 x 10^n
Solar Calendar Year (~365) 365.0200808 / (1.718873386 x 6) = Lunar Calendar Year (~354) 353.9334578 / 10^n
We also see extended use of the Remen value in feet in astronomical equations, including that the cube of the reciprocal of 2 Remens may be the best approximation of the 6939 day Nodal Cycle that we can hope for
(1 / (1.216733603 x 2))^3 = 6939.425316 / 10^n
Then just the other day, we discovered working in the Lahun Sepulchral Chamber that we could construct a good approximation of the 6585.3211 day Saros Cycle from the reciprocal of the same Mars Synodic Period
((1 / 779.272728) x 2)^2 = 6586.899483 / 10^n
These two are linked by 6586.899483 / 6939.425316 = .9491995851 = 18983.99170 / 2 / 10^n, so there is the Calendar Round (Half Venus Cycle) in between the two.
Here’s another one that I like: Mars Synodic Period 779.272728 / Venus Orbital Period 224.8373808 = 346.5939362 / 100, our best value for the Eclipse Year.
I have been saying that what I think might have happened is that the ancients were so proud of the development of multi-cycle calendars, which at the time must have been by far the greatest mathematical achievement ever, that for thousands of years after, they strove to incorporate these findings into at very least every major architectural project possible and even into their metrological units themselves.
What if, however, there is more to it than that? What if they discovered through these approximations that there really is some profound order underlying the proportions between planetary, lunar, and solar cycles?
Not that this inspired any actual religion nor planet-worship on their part (again, it seems hard to worship this stuff when you know that the one who did the hard work of making it all work is you and what really makes it work is a huge stack of paper and a box of pencils), but what if the great mathematical discovery they were celebrating so seemingly obsessively were more on the order of advanced discoveries not just in coordinating calendars, but a true discovery of some underlying astrophysical order of some kind?
It may be a largely rhetorical discovery, but it would be even more cause for ancient pride than is simply synchronizing multiple cycles into a single calendar.
Most days, these numbers are just a little too full of “serendipity” or “happy coincidences” to quite want to leave it at simply being proud of themselves for having pulled off the most complex calendars imaginable, even for as much as that says about ancient attitudes toward math (i.e., most of us today clearly seem to be more afraid of math than the ancient astronomers and architects, in very stark contrast to the “simple minds” we have always heard they were).
–Luke Piwalker
Luke Piwalker 