Hipparchus

With a hat-tip to Nyrath, the star chart that started them all. It's a Greek palimpsest overwritten by, er, late mediaeval Syriac.

Why that Syrian didn't just buy some new parchment or paper instead of his act of vandalism is something that he'll have to answer to, at the Qiyama.

The original chart is nonPtolemaic on account it uses the celestial equator rather than the ecliptic - read, zodiac. It's also late second-century BC on account of the precession of equinoxes (-noces?). The best solution is that this is Hipparchus. (It further exonerates Ptolemy from plagiary-charges; although, not from the ancient charge against him that he just wasn't a very good astronomer.)

If this MSS is verified (it probably will be) and correctly translated, we might get a baseline for later charts as used Hipparchus and not Ptolemy. Central Asia seems promising. The stars in the chart itself will be checkable for, say, relative motion in antiquity.

Hey maybe there's a comet or even a Uranus sighting in there. Probably not Neptune I'll admit. WHERE 10/19 the sequel. This palimpsest and the Latin partial-translation (mutually exclusive!) don't discuss the zone of planets, which we call "the ecliptic". But -