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Ancient Chinese astronomy manuscript From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Divination by Astrological and Meteorological Phenomena (Chinese: 天文氣象雜占; pinyin: Tiān Wén Qì Xiàng Zá Zhàn), also known as Book of Silk is an ancient astronomy silk manuscript compiled by Chinese astronomers of the Western Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD) and found in the Mawangdui of Changsha, Hunan, China in 1973. It lists 29 comets (referred to as 彗星, huì xīng, literally broom stars) that appeared over a period of about 300 years.
It is now exhibited in the Hunan Provincial Museum.[2]
The Divination by Astrological and Meteorological Phenomena contains what archaeologists claim is the first definitive atlas of comets. There are roughly two dozen renderings of comets, some in fold out/pop-up format. In some cases, the pages of the document roll out to be five feet long. Each comet's picture has a caption which describes an event its appearance corresponded to, such as "the death of the prince", "the coming of the plague", or "the three-year drought."
One of the comets in the manuscript has four tails and resembles a swastika. In their 1985 book Comet, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan argue that the appearance of a rotating comet with a four-pronged tail as early as 2,000 years BCE could explain why the swastika is found in the cultures of both the Old World and the pre-Columbian Americas.
Bob Kobres, in a 1992 paper, contends that the swastika-like comet on the Han-dynasty manuscript was labelled a "long tailed pheasant star" (dixing) because of its resemblance to a bird's foot or footprint
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