The scheme of lengths of moonlight (2)

Text
Enūma Anu Enlil 14th tablet gives the scheme of lengths of moonlight on the thirty nights of a synodic month, which occurs in a modified form in Pliny.

Pliny the Elder, Naturalia Historia 18.75 (32):
Whenever the moon is seen at sunset and in the earlier hours of the night, she will be waxing and will appear to be cut in half, but when she rises at sunset opposite of the sun, so that sun and moon are visible at the same time, then it will be full moon. When she rises with the sunrise and withholds her light in the earlier hours of the night and prolongs it into daytime, she will be waning and will again show only half; but when she has ceased to be visible she is in conjunction, the period designated ‘between moons’. During the conjunction she will be above the horizon as long as the sun us and during the whole of the first day, on the second day ten and a quarter twelfths of an hour of the night, and then on the third day and on to the 15th with the same fractions of an hour added in progression. On the 15th day she will be above the horizon all night and also below it all day. On the 16th she will remain below the horizon ten and a quarter twelfths of the first hour of the night, and she will go on adding the same fraction of an hour every day in succession until the period of conjunction, and will add from the day-time to the last parts of the night above the horizon as much as she subtracts from its first parts when below the earth. She will complete thirty revolutions in alternate months but subtract one from that number every alternate month.

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Enūma Anu Enlil 14
Pliny the Elder, Naturalia Historia 18.75 (32)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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