Posted on 07/31/2008 8:51:11 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Ciyuan Liu and Liping Ma, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Xueshun Liu, of the University of British Columbia, studied early eclipse records and wrote of the total eclipse's special political position in ancient Chinese culture.
"It was a warning to the Emperor -- for the Sun was the symbol of the Emperor according to traditional astrological theories," Liu said in email, quoting his 2003 paper published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
"When an eclipse occurred, the Emperor would normally eat vegetarian meals, avoid the main palace, perform rituals to rescue the Sun and, sometimes, issue imperial edict to take the blame on himself."
The earliest known recorded solar eclipse in about 2100 B.C. surprised ancient astrologers Xi and He in the court of Emperor Zhong Kang, one story goes.
"[The record] states that two court astrologers were beheaded because they didn't anticipate the total eclipse of the sun, and the emperor was mighty annoyed," said Sten Odenwald, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Catholic University.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
|
|
|||
Gods |
To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Just kidding. :-))
I don’t blame the emperor, given the selections available at that time.
We think alike. ;’)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.