Education

Russell Chamberlin's book, the Tower Of London, is a historical view on the history of England through the eyes of it's architecture. Chamberlin's analysis summarizes the development of the Towers, to the present day as a monument. This historic fortress was built on the remains of Roman fortifications. It was built in the late 12th century under the reign of King William II (1065-1087). Although its exterior walls were restored in the 18th century, the interior still has much of its original Norman character. Later buildings surrounding the original keep include a barracks and a chapel built in the 14th century and restored in the 16th century. The inner fortifications, called the Ballium Wall, have 12 towers: the Bloody Tower, the Wakefield Tower, the Bell Tower, the Lanthorn Tower, the Salt Tower , the Broad Arrow Tower, the Constable Tower, the Martin Tower, the Brick Tower, the Bowyer Tower, the Flint Tower, the Devereux Tower, and the Beauchamp Tower.

The tower was used as a royal palace as well as for a prison until Elizabethan times. Use of the tower as a prison was discontinued in the 19th century. Executions were held either in the central keep or outside the tower on Tower Hill. It is now largely a showplace and museum. It holds the crown jewels of England and is one of the country's greatest tourist attractions. A popular feature is the Yeomen of the Guard, known as Beefeaters, who still wear colorful uniforms of the Tudor period.

This book contains some wonderful pictures but is not the comprehensive history I had expected. In fact, it is primarily an extended guidebook. It details all the building works that have ever taken place at the Tower - including demolitions and re-building - and not enough about the historic events played out within its forbidding walls.

Source: Russell Chamberlin, The Tower of London: an Illustrated History (Webb & Bower, 1989.) Eric Wright

In the New World, there were ancient people who, like the Chaldeans and the Chinese, used writing to record eclipses and from these records detected a rhythm by which they could predict them or at least warn of their likelihood. Those people were the Maya, and we know of their achievement through one of their books—one of only four that survived the Spanish conquest and its zealous destruction of the religious beliefs of the native peoples.

All that we know of Maya accomplishments in recognizing the patterns of eclipses comes from the Dresden Codex, written in hieroglyphs and pictures in color paints on processed tree bark with pages that open and shut in accordion folds. The book dates from the eleventh century A.D. and is probably a copy of an older work.
We can only wonder what was lost when the conquering Spaniards destroyed by the thousands the books of the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples. What remains is impressive enough. The Maya realized that discernible eclipses occur at intervals of five or six lunar months. Five or six full moons after a lunar eclipse, there was the possibility of another lunar eclipse. Five or six new moons after a solar eclipse, another solar eclipse was possible.

The Maya had discovered in practical, observable terms the approximate length of the eclipse year, 346.62 days, and the eclipse half year of 173.31 days. The interval for one complete set of lunar phases is 29.53 days. Six lunations amount to approximately 177.18 days, close enough to the eclipse half year (173.31 days) so that there is the "danger" of an eclipse at every sixth new or full moon, but not a certainty. After another six lunar months, the passing days have amounted to 354.36, nearly 8 days too long to coincide with the Sun's passage by the Moon's node.

An eclipse is less likely. As the error mounts, the need increases to substitute a five-lunar-month cycle into the prediction system rather than the standard six-lunar-month count.

Some great genius must have noticed after recording a sizable number of eclipses that major eclipses were occurring only at intervals of 177 days (6 lunar months) or 148 days (5 lunar months). Using the date of an observed solar or lunar eclipse, it would then have been possible to predict the likelihood of another eclipse, even though in some cases an eclipse would not occur and in others it would not be visible from Mesoamerica.

In the Dresden Codex there are eight pages with a variety of pictures representing an eclipse. Each depiction is different, but most show the glyph for the Sun against a background half white and half black. In two of the pictures, the Sun and background are being swallowed by a serpent. Leading up to each picture is a sequence of numbers: a series of 177s ending with a 148. Each sequence adds up to the number of days in well-known three- to five-year eclipse cycles. At the end of each burst of numbers stands the giant, haunting symbol of an eclipse.

From the Maya, we have the numbers that demonstrate one of the greatest of their many discoveries about the rhythms of the sky, but we have no account of the emotion the astronomer-priests or the common folk felt when they observed an eclipse. Perhaps the closest we can come is a passage in the Florentine Codex of the Aztecs, who inherited and used the Mesoamerican calendar but apparently knew little of the astronomy discovered by the Maya a thousand years and more before. Alan Benson

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