Stars without a Table: Planetary Horocrators from the Cairo Geniza
This essay describes a list of planetary horocrators—that is, the planets ruling each hour of the week—found in an eleventh-century manuscript from the Cairo Genizah. Four different fragments of this manuscript have thus far been identified, and they enable the reconstruction of the list's orig...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
2021
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
Year: 2021, Volume: 111, Issue: 3, Pages: 380-388 |
| Further subjects: | B
Divination
B Cairo Genizah B sortes B Planets B Lists B goralot B Astrology B planetary horocrators B Tables B Lot-casting B Judeo-Arabic |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This essay describes a list of planetary horocrators—that is, the planets ruling each hour of the week—found in an eleventh-century manuscript from the Cairo Genizah. Four different fragments of this manuscript have thus far been identified, and they enable the reconstruction of the list's original layout. Such a list can easily be tabulated, but the medieval Jewish scribe who produced it preferred to spell it out in its entirety, and in a very disorganized manner. In part, this was because the Jews of medieval Cairo were more used to working with lists than with tables. But given his interest in various methods of divination (his manuscript also included a handbook of goralot, or lot-casting), our scribe may have deemed that the cumbersome and opaque layout of his list might enhance its perceived validity. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/jqr.2021.0026 |