Dating the Poet

The Poet and the Problem of Dating Him

The author of this poem has been placed from Germany to England, but information in the poem suggests that he is from the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps Anatolia. He identifies Procyon as Aeschere, an Arabic name. He knows Ursa Major as the Ox Shoulder, from the Egyptian area. He knows the full extent of Lupus though she shows only her head and one foot at the northern latitude.

By leaving the zodiac and turning south when his calendar reaches Gemini he seems to ascribe to the idea that the world is only six thousand or so years old, having been created when Gemini was the House of the Sun.

Finally he describes a calendar that is adequate at the latitude of Denmark, but it has several gaps of a week to ten days at non-critical times. These gaps do not occur if the sequence of constellations is viewed from a more southern latitude.

Looking at the seven scenes in the sky as described by the poet does not lead to a date for the poem. All seven are not in any sequence and they are individually repeated, from every couple of years to every couple of hundred years. They are phenomena, and if they were datable then there would be some time when the poem would be over. Since his calendar is useful until the next house of the sun is designated, in 2378 or so when the house changes to Aquarius, the poet does not mean the poem to be finished as a calendar until that far date.