Archaeology Odyssey

See Harold Brodsky, “Ptolemy Charts the World,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, 01:02.

Although the Canon is a product of Alexandria, a city founded in the late fourth century B.C., Greek astronomers, including Ptolemy, relied upon Babylonian astronomical observations dating to before the city’s founding. The Canon thus shifts from rulers of Assyria and Babylonia to rulers of Egypt.

Kings normally don’t begin or end their reign on New Year’s Day. The Egyptians had an elaborate system for rounding off kings’ reigns.

These rulers of Egypt are of Macedonian descent, having come to power after Alexander’s conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. The last and most famous of the rulers of this Greek/Egyptian dynasty, called the Ptolemaic dynasty, was Cleopatra.

Obviously, on February 26, 747 B.C., there was neither a February 26 nor a 747 B.C. Our modern time-reckoning has been extended backward into the past, according to a convention first applied in the 17th century.

Although Joseph Scaliger knew only a defective version of this king list, by the early 17th century a number of correct versions were available to scholars. The three earliest correct manuscripts, written in Byzantine uncial script, date from the eighth to tenth century A.D.; they are kept in Leiden (Leidensis BPG 78), the Vatican (Vaticanus graecus 1291) and Florence (Laurentianus 28–26).

Eusebius/Jerome counted years from the first Olympiad, beginning in 776 B.C. They dated events as occurring during the first, second, third or fourth year of a specific Olympiad. The notion of counting years A.D.—that is, Anno Domini, or “in the year of the Lord”—from the birth of Jesus was the invention of Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little), a monk who lived in Rome in the sixth century A.D. (see Leonora Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, 03:01).

This Mycenaean tomb, dating to 1450 B.C., is discussed in Robert Arnott, “Healing and Medicine in the Aegean Bronze Age,” Historical Review 89 (1996), pp. 265–270.

According to Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, the last words spoken by Socrates (469–399 B.C.) were, “Crito, I owe a cock to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt?”

Asklepios’s serpent-entwined staff (the caduceus) is even today a symbol of healing and medicine all over the world.