Dear all,
I am in complete agreement that Freeth’s new film
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F518734183&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643260309%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Doakyo%2F0LBEtJIxPkvogYZxXxnsBSPuZnsc6JIwIfk8%3D&reserved=0>, animations and some conjectures about the
Antikythera Mechanism are truly spectacular and impressive, but
unfortunately the central idea in his new paper
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41598-021-84310-w%23Sec3&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643260309%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=ldO1fuDJB54zq0bi7isyFPyMniReKFsxUjHSgPP5UR8%3D&reserved=0>, based upon the
inscriptions and other evidence on the Mechanism, that the front of the
Antikythera Mechanism may have used moving rings with *sphairai* fixed
within them to depict the forward and retrograde motion of the planets
rather than planets moving on pointers like the Sun and Moon is not
Freeth’s own, original idea, but it is Alexander Jones’s from 10 years ago,
which you can see in Jones’s note here
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.nyu.edu%2Fhandle%2F2451%2F61729&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643260309%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=4V2R2XHcjphq0ScmZVwWV0h2SUDKrH27wuIWDErUf5M%3D&reserved=0>. I myself have seen the e-mails
in which Jones shared this short note with Freeth while they were working
on their 2012 paper together <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdlib.nyu.edu%2Fawdl%2Fisaw%2Fisaw-papers%2F4%2F&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643260309%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=5D93X6Zi4ouXN1arO62Axdcbt2SjsDm%2BnNLqx9gLhP4%3D&reserved=0> (at
which idea Freeth expressed excitement, but then I understand he rejected
it because he did not think it mechanically viable), so I am not reporting
hearsay here. Note that while it is true that Freeth is working out the
mechanics to comply with this model and he credits Rehm with a similar idea
in Rhem’s unpublished notes from years ago (which figures prominently in
the film), Rehm’s rings related to the extant back of the Mechanism that we
now know were a part of the Metonic Calendar Spiral and not the front
Cosmos, so this does not obviate the need, in my opinion, to cite Jones’s
idea about the Cosmos on the front. It is also my feeling that if Freeth
were an academic rather than a film-maker making films in which he plays
the starring role, he could possibly face academic sanction for this. I
want to stress that I am fairly sure that the other authors who appear in
this new paper and in the film did not know about his correspondence with
Jones on this matter and are therefore not party to this behavior, and I
imagine that if, or when they come to find out about it, they will be
horrified.
Actually, Freeth already has quite a history of pushing the envelope on
this sort of thing, or something quite similar to it. For instance, at a
workshop in 2013 in Leiden
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lorentzcenter.nl%2Fthe-antikythera-mechanism-science-and-innovation-in-the-ancient-world.html&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Ajsgdw%2BdFh5axxyz9tmCB26hcEaX0Pq99%2FJo%2F2NdAs4%3D&reserved=0>,
Christián Carman and James Evans presented a paper in which they publicly
identified the start-up epoch of the eclipse dial as the month that began
with the new moon of April 28, 205 BCE. Freeth was in the audience that
day, and one year later in July of 2014 he published this same epochal date
in this article
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.plos.org%2Fplosone%2Farticle%3Fid%3D10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103275&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=ztq%2FI1niKjXuAJUEbR%2FywwKZOmeNm2KSKfpU33pKRzg%3D&reserved=0> and
claimed that he independently came to the same conclusion using a different
method (Carman and Evans would publish their piece later that same year in
November here <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs00407-014-0145-5&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=%2FMnWt2OuxFROD0Oggj%2Fscu7a6xlGdu6DbP9bX%2F%2FAy6o%3D&reserved=0>
).
OK, he does give a small nod to Carman and Evans in this paper saying they
gave their paper the year before using a different method, and that could
have happened, but in this same 2014 article, Freeth, who does not read
Greek, also presented the first complete edition of what is known as the
Back Plate Inscription as the product of collaboration with the epigraphist
Charles Crowther, when in fact he had seen drafts of an advance text of it
from other members of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (which
they eventually published in 2016 here
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.brepolsonline.net%2Ftoc%2Falmagest%2F2016%2F7%2F1&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=WrEOmAJCNsBSlzVQ%2FILcpLUhNfq%2Bi6N2KbmW5njZxZc%3D&reserved=0>), from whom he became
estranged by 2013. Although in this 2014 article Freeth was the first to
recognize the crucial fact that the Index Letters on the Back Plate
Inscription were listed in decreasing lunar latitude, which was a
noteworthy accomplishment among others, again this does not obviate the
need to give proper credit for much of the text (about which text you can
see an even newer edition here
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs00407-019-00229-9&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=vHkLeC9nAu%2FAwl3ZhBn1EewQcFwxxevdcmvABNxD2q4%3D&reserved=0> and how it
contradicts Freeth’s layout of the missing portions of the Back Plate
Inscription). Furthermore, I should also say that I am quite confident
Crowther was unaware what Freeth was doing, so no blame attaches to him.
As for the new article itself, the idea of rings that move forward and
backwards with the *sphairai* of the planets embedded within them is very
attractive and it will be interesting to see if they can work out a
functioning model and whether their proposed gear trains stand up to
further scrutiny, although I do not think the Back Cover Inscription rules
out pointers for the planets either. There is, however, absolutely no
evidence on the preserved parts of the Mechanism or inscriptions for lunar
node display pointers (his double-ended dragon hand), so that is very
conjectural. Also, I would like to see a better explanation for why the
Zodiac Scale seems to be divided unequally (as Carman, Evans and Thorndike
have argued both here
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2F10.1177%2F002182861004100101&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=cN7w1cVpO1BUA7nR2jI%2Fnxb89Jz8D33CwOISaXdQrdQ%3D&reserved=0> and here
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs00407-019-00237-9&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=AdLuPxfdAs7Fb38n8VAkIhDEj8Fy4ud8i5ZEXayYFRA%3D&reserved=0>, an anomaly
Freeth accepts in his Supplementary Notes but explained as probably
introduced accidentally during the process of making the scale divisions on
the Zodiac ring, which seems out of keeping with the care elsewhere shown
on the Mechanism). He does not even mention the recent work of Budiselic *et
alii*
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbhi.co.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F12%2FBHI-Antikythera-Mechanism-Evidence-of-a-Lunar-Calendar.pdf&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=TYJeUyx92eiQHzANyBau0SO9Nqx%2B7wcx0tGoHn4x9%2B4%3D&reserved=0>
who claim that the Egyptian scale had only 354 holes (I personally really
question this idea, but he should at least address the issue by saying
whether their measurements of the preserved holes under the Egyptian Scale
are accurate or even useful for measuring the entire circumference). I also
am very, very skeptical that within the Front Cover Inscription (FCI) there
were Index Letters per his Figure 8
<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41598-021-84310-w%2Ffigures%2F8&data=04%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C32c7bb1aae5144509dca08d8e7ab66d2%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637514070643270303%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=6I1rTz8uxyiKcF43Hyl6AwO4RH1c9BXQH5bBO3bNWQE%3D&reserved=0> - none is
clearly preserved within the FCI (for which I am preparing a new edition),
although admittedly it is an extremely difficult text, but in any case I
think it unlikely that none would be found in the fairly extensive
preserved portions, if they existed. I also don’t see how there would be
room for such comments anywhere around the front dials (not that he says or
implies this), as the parapegma plates/text seem to take up all the
available space above and below the central dials, and there isn’t space on
either side of the front dials for them, but I also don’t believe there was
enough room to the missing sides, top and bottom of the existing Front
Cover Inscription on the Front Cover Plate, if the Front Cover Plate was
more or less the same size as the total dimensions of the front and back,
which seems likely. I guess they would then require another missing
inscribed plate.
Best,
Paul Iversen
On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 1:48 PM Lampros Kallenos <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> > The mechanism survives in petrified fragments, and can only be
> studied with X rays. Further, we may suppose that the gears must have
> moved from their position before been solidified by corrosion. Even so,
> if the positions to each other of the gears that give these two long
> periods of Venus and Saturn can be identified, this can lead to the
> point in the periods of Venus and Saturn that the mechanism was in use.
> Then, already knowing the estimated century of the artifact, we could be
> lead to an even more accurate date for it.
> >
> >
>
> A more clarified version :
>
> The mechanism survives in petrified fragments, and can only be studied
> with X rays. Further, we may suppose that the gears must have moved from
> their position before been solidified by corrosion.
>
> Even so, if the positions to each other of the gears that give these two
> long periods of Venus and Saturn can be identified, this can lead to the
> point in the periods of Venus and Saturn that the mechanism was in use.
>
> In the course of millenia there are many such points. But knowing the
> estimated century of the artifact, we could be lead to an accurate date
> for it.
>
>
> _____________________
> Lampros F. Kallenos
> Idalion, Lefkosia
> Kypros
> -.
>
--
Paul A. Iversen
Chair, Associate Professor
Department of Classics
Case Western Reserve University
|
