Slovo o polku Igoreve

[Markus Osterrieder]

Dear colleagues,

The eclipse occured on the 1st of May, 1185, at 18:47 Universal Time. It
was seen all over Central and Southern Russia. This event is duely
mentioned in the PVL under the year 6694. Just after this entry, the PVL
says that Igor' rode against the Polovcy. So, any poet could have made
use of this occurence.

Markus Osterrieder



On 07.05.1998 20:54 Uhr P-S.Fischer at worldnet.att.net wrote:

>While I don't mean to make light of literary detective work, I wanted to
>remind interested colleagues of the one hard, scientific fact that
>remains, when all the shouting is over, the most compelling argument for
>the authenticity of the Igor Tale.  Recall that Ol' Igor and his
>druzhina don't just ride off into the sunset.  They ride smack into an
>ecclipse of the sun which is not your everyday celestial event.  I
>haven't checked my notes and can't cite references, but astronomers'
>calculations confirm that in the year of Igor's campaign an ecclipse of
>the sun did occur and could be seen from the area where Prince Igor went
>to do battle with the Polovtsians.  I think it's fair to postulate that
>no 18th century literary forger, be he a latter-day Bojan, Nestor, and
>Copernicus all rolled into one, could have gotten the dating of that
>ecclipse right.  The conspiracy buffs will probably object that the
>presumed forger could have worked from a reference to the ecclipse in
>the Chronicle, itd, itp.  Anyway...


************************************

Markus Osterrieder, M.A.

Osteuropa-Institut
Historische Abteilung
Munich, Germany

eMail: u9511bw at mail.lrz-muenchen.de