Ancient Egyptians described Algol's eclipses

Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 14:43 in Paleontology & Archaeology

The Ancient Egyptian papyrus Cairo 86637 calendar is the oldest preserved historical document of naked eye observations of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol - a manifestation of Horus, a god and a king. This calendar contains lucky or unlucky prognoses for each day of one year. Lauri Jetsu and Sebastian Porceddu from the University of Helsinki have performed a statistical analysis of the Cairo Calendar mythological texts.

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