Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday 20 October 2022

An Ancient Greek star map revealed


Just as our knowledge of the stars of the Universe expands so too does our knowledge of what our ancestors knew and discovered in their times about the heavenly bodies.

The monastery of St Catherine in Sinai has defied time and circumstance to preserve an astonishing treasure house of early manuscripts in its library. It is one of these codices, which is now in the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, which has yielded a fascinating story. The Syriac codex is a palimpsest. In the tenth or eleventh century a Syriac text was written on top of a collection of fifth or sixth century astronomical material. 

This then yielded part of a star catalogue that can be assigned, because of the Earth’s precession, to the time of Hipparchus in the second century BC. Although Hipparchus was believed to have made such a star catalogue its text had not, it was thought, survived. Here
appears to be clear evidence that it did exist, was still being transcribed centuries later, and that part at least still exists.

Hipparchus, of whom there is a lengthy Wikipedia account at Hipparchushas been seen as one of the greatest astronomers of all time, a Greek who drew upon Babylonian records for his work.

This latest manuscript discovery is set out in an article in Nature which can be seen online at  First known map of night sky found hidden in Medieval parchment


That article is reprised in an article in Greek Reporter which gives a little more context to the career of Hipparchus and can be seen at Ancient Greek Map of the Sky Discovered at Orthodox Monastery


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