Browsing by Author "Porceddu, Sebastian"

This study presents an analysis of the calendars of lucky and unlucky days by the application of the Rayleigh Test. In these ancient Egyptian texts each day of the year is assigned a so-called prognosis, which can be 'good' or 'bad' for each part of the day. The purpose of the analysis is to find out, whether the lucky and unlucky days were randomly or periodically distributed within the year. The period of 29.5 days found in the prognoses with a considerably high significance, represents the effect of the synodic month to the calendars. The found periods of 7.5 and 30 days suggest that the ancient Egyptian civil calendar also had influence on determining the prognoses. Other significant periods are also found in the time series, possibly based on a numerological meaning. The period of 2.85 is possibly a sign of an ancient Egyptian observation of the star Algol, which is one of the best known eclipsing variable stars. If this were the case, it could be the oldest known determination of the period of a variable star in history.