The article to which ML refers is actually, O. Neugebauer, 'The History of Ancient Astronomy, Problems and Methods', JNES 4, 1945:1-38 = Publications of the Atronomical Society of the Pacific, 58,(380), 1946: 17-142, at 37-38 = Astronomy and History, Springer Verlag, New Yorky, Berlin etc., 1983:53-54.
The passage KG quotes from Considerations is properly referenced as O. Neugebauer, Studies in the History of Science, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1941, p. 16.
The Babylonian 30/12 +5 claendar was used for 'business transactions, payment of interest etc.' (ON, in Isis 37, 1947:37).
The use of this claendar is amply attested. The Seleucid lunar calculations were referenced to find the correspondant date of the civil claendar in this. As in Egypt, both calendars co-existed and were used without conflict. Neugebauer also sees their development as having the same simple mathematical average at base; cf. O. Neugebauer, 'The Origin of the Egyptian Calendar,' JNES 1, 1942: p. 398:
'the fact that the 30-day months are by no means peculiar to Egypt but play a very important role also in Mesopotamia';
p. 400-401
It is amply testified from Babylonia sources... beside the real lunar calendar there was a schematic calendar of twelve months of 30 days each, regardless of the moon... But it is interesting to see that this schematic year was also in use in astronomical texts. Solstices and equinoxes are listed as falling on the fithteenth of the Months I, IV, VII and X, although everybody knew that the dates in the real lunar calendar would be totally different in almost all cases... This use of the schematic claendar in an astronomical context is especially important: it demonstrates clearly that the schematic dates do not represent an attempt to approximate as closely as possible the real facts but merely constitute a way of expressing future dates in round numbers according to a general scheme whose exact relation to the real lunar calendar remains to be established later on when actually needed[;'
cf., also Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, index s.v. lunar calendar, etc.;
v, ibid., p. 102-103:
'The zodiac was hardly ever more than a mathematical idealization needed and used exclusively for computory purposes. Actual positions in the sky were expressed until the end of cuneiform writing with reference to well known bright stars.'
Now, THAT is a tom-cat of Twelve amongst the pigeons, isn't it, Marilynn?
As for the quote that KG gives, I would rather think that Neugebauer has performed a slight slip of eytmological significance. Merely because a word has a root meaning, does not mean that that meaning is carried through at all times and places. Were this to be so, whenever I called someone 'nice' I would really be saying that they are stupid, rather than precise, rather than simpatico, which of course does not mean that they are crypto-Buddhists.
By the same token the eytmological reasoning which Neugebauer puts forth is flawed. Homer nods.
feliciter,
Lorenzo Smerillo
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