Primary texts

17 entries

• "Vedic Astrology": the TermTermModernHellenistic

  A modern label for the Indian astrological tradition, and what the textual record does and does not support about the antiquity it claims.

• Abū MaʿsharPersonIslamicateMedieval Latin

  A ninth-century Baghdad astrologer whose two major works, each translated twice into Latin, were among the widest channels astrology used to reach Europe.

• al-BīrūnīPersonIslamicate

  An eleventh-century polymath whose astrology manual is technically rigorous, written by a man who never states outright whether he believed the doctrine true.

• Bede and the Old English MonthsPrimary textGermanicMedieval LatinBEvidence grade B of five, A strongest, E weakest: Near-contemporary outsider report

  One chapter of an eighth-century textbook on time-reckoning is the only surviving account of the pre-Christian English calendar. What it does not say.

• Claudius PtolemyPersonHellenisticRomanIslamicateMedieval LatinRenaissance and early modern

  The name attached to more of this site's material than any other, and the man underneath it, who names six of the twelve places and is silent about the rest.

• Dorotheus of SidonPersonHellenisticIslamicate

  The most-cited author on this site, whose Greek is lost, and whose ranking of the twelve places is assembled here from the entries that each hold one line.

• Eastward Transmission of Hellenistic Astral MaterialConceptTang ChinaHellenistic

  Alexandrian astral material reached Tang China through Indian and Iranian intermediaries, by the same routes and the same translations that carried it west.

• Greek Loanwords in Sanskrit AstrologyConceptHellenisticModern

  Sanskrit horoscopic vocabulary carries Greek technical terms, and what that does and does not establish about how the two traditions met.

• MāshāʾallāhPersonIslamicate

  An astrologer at the earliest Abbasid court, credited with electing the moment for founding Baghdad in 762; his own writing survives only in later epitomes.

• The Coligny CalendarPrimary textGaulishRomanAEvidence grade A of five, A strongest, E weakest: Contemporary insider document, or a dated object

  A bronze plaque from Roman Gaul, in Gaulish, recording a five-year lunisolar cycle. The only calendar document from a pre-Christian Celtic-speaking people.

• The Graeco-Arabic Translation MovementConceptIslamicate

  Greek and some Sanskrit scientific works entered Arabic in Abbasid Baghdad across two centuries, sponsored partly by a court invested in astrology.

• The Old Icelandic Misseri CalendarConceptNorseGermanicAEvidence grade A of five, A strongest, E weakest: Contemporary insider document, or a dated object

  A week-based two-season year with a leap week instead of a leap day, described by the people who used it and computable to the day for any year.

• The TetrabiblosPrimary textHellenisticIslamicateMedieval LatinRenaissance and early modern

  Ptolemy's four books on astrology: what the work is for, how it reached the present through three languages, and why its chapter numbers must be named.

• The Twelfth-Century Translation MovementConceptIslamicateMedieval Latin

  In the twelfth century, Arabic astronomical and astrological texts, Greek and Arabic in origin alike, were translated into Latin, chiefly from Iberia.

• The Yavanajātaka and its DatingPrimary textHellenisticModern

  A Sanskrit astrological text long dated to the second and third centuries CE on readings its manuscripts do not contain, and the correction that followed.

• The Zīj al-SindhindPrimary textIslamicateMedieval Latin

  A Sanskrit astronomical treatise reached Baghdad in the 770s, became an Arabic zīj, and by that route entered Latin Europe.

• William LillyPersonRenaissance and early modernModern

  The most consequential transmitter in modern astrological software, whose tables most programs ship under somebody else's name.