ABSTRACT
Chinese records tell of a conjunction of five planets about 2500 BC, and of a solar eclipse in Scorpio 2159 BC, about which it is said that the government astronomers, were beheaded for failing to predict it. Even in historic times the records are often entirely absurd, as, for instance, those commemorating respectively a cloudless night without stars and a star as large as the moon, to say nothing of the fact that there is a gap of 1383 years between the first two eclipses, and that none of them, with one doubtful exception, can be identified earlier than the time of Ptolemy. Indian astronomy is different in that it possesses a system of its own, with tables and rules for calculation, the basis of which claims to be a conjunction of the sun, moon, and planets. Egyptian astronomy, again, lays claim to high antiquity, and the evidence freely adduced here, though almost entirely circumstantial, is at any rate interesting.
