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The earlier texts considered to be almanacs have been found in the Near east, dating back to the middle of the second millennium BCE. They have been called generally hemerologies, from the Greek 'hēmerā', meaning 'day'. Among them is the so-called Babylonian Almanac, which lists favorable and unfavorable days with advice on what to do on each of them. Successive variants and versions aimed at different readership have been found.[4] Egyptians lists for good and bad moments, three times each day, have also been found. It is not really known how these prognostics were produced but they seem invariably connected with celestial events.[5][6] The flooding of the Nile valley, a most important event in ancient Egypt, was expected to occur at the summer solstice but as the civil calendar had exactly 365 days, over the centuries the date was drifting in the calendar.[7] The first heliacal rising of Sirius was used for its prediction and this practice, the observation of some star and its connecting to some event apparently spread. The Greek almanac, known as parapegma, has existed in the form an inscribed stone on which the days of the month were indicated by movable pegs inserted into bored holes, hence the name. There were also written texts and according to Diogenes Laërtius, Parapegma was the title of a book by Democritus.[8] Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer (2nd century) wrote a treatise, Phaseis—"phases of fixed stars and collection of weather-changes" is the translation of its full title—the core of which is a parapegma, a list of dates of seasonally regular weather changes, first appearances and last appearances of stars or constellations at sunrise or sunset, and solar events such as solstices, all organized according to the solar year. With the astronomical computations were expected weather phenomena, composed as a digest of observations made by various authorities of the past. Parapegmata had been composed for centuries. Ptolemy believed that astronomical phenomena caused the changes in seasonal weather; his explanation of why there was not an exact correlation of these events was that the physical influences of other heavenly bodies also came into play. Hence for him, weather prediction was a special division of astrology.[9] |
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