Calendar notes

[kiya]

Sirius has a right ascension of 6 hours, 45 minutes, and roughly 9 seconds, according to Wikipedia.

6.45.09 as a fraction of 24.00.00 is ... annoying to calculate right now ... denominator 86,400 ... 9 and 2700 and 21600 is 24,309? ... 28.135417% of the year counted from the vernal equinox.

The mean tropical year (equinox to equinox) is currently 365 d 5 h 48 min 45 s, according to wikipedia. That would be 365*86,400 + 5*3600 + 48*60 + 45 seconds. 31,536,000 + 18,000 + 2880 + 45. 31,556,925 seconds.

That puts the sun at the same RA as Sirius at 8,878,670 seconds after the vernal equinox. Unless I've typed something into the calculator wrong.

That puts the conjunction in RA of the sun and Sirius at 102 days 18 hours 17 minutes 50 seconds after the vernal equinox.

The traditional duration of the disappearance of Sirius behind the sun is 70 days. If we handwave that the conjunction falls in the center of that period rather than do more horrible math to work out the changes in speed of apparent motion of the sun at various points in the year, that places Wep Renpet at ... 137 days, 18 hours, 17 minutes, and 50 seconds after the vernal equinox in the J2000.0 epoch standard for defining the First Point of Aries.

Oh god now I have to translate that into months.

Approximating: Eleven days after the equinox in March leaves 126; April brings that down to 96, May 65, 35 from June, 4 from July. Wep Renpet can be standardised for J2000 for a point in August 4-6 UTC depending on how the addition works out, and I can fucking work with that. Probably the fourth or fifth, I don't think any equinoxes fall late enough on the 5th to have the 18 hours push it to the sixth UTC.

Looking at the chart of equinoxen on wikipedia, it looks like most of the time it will fall on the 5th, as very few of the times are before 6 UTC on the 20th.

That puts the Days Upon the Year as, typically, 31 July-4 August. Which would mean KJ shares a birthday with Heru-Wr. Though she was born on Set's birthday UTC. Though that would still be before dawn - probably in predawn light - and I think day counts from dawn in Egyptiana, so Heru-Wr it probably is. Hee hee.



Okay. I feel a little better now.

Comments

[ryanfirewitch.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. And you said "equinoxen" for teh win!

I was thinking of you and all things Kemetic recently. I went to the Oriental Institute yesterday.

The recommended text that they use for teaching Middle Egyptian at UofC is James Hoch's Middle Egyptian Grammar, which is apparently a heck of a lot more user-friendly than Gardiner. I was getting all excited when the preface mentions "A Scribe of KMT" which is a flashcard program to review signs. Unfortunately, I later discovered that it is still around... for HYPERCARD. Oh my. I had forgotten that HyperCard even existed! I hadn't touched it since high school. Oh well....