Ptolemaiou procheiroi kanones

de Ptolemy

The handy tables of Ptolemy have exercised, in the history of ancient astronomy, an influence at least equal to that of the Mathematical Syntaxis (Almagest). This work includes a short manual explaining how to use these tables, as well as the tables themselves. If the manual has already been the subject of a critical edition by Heiberg in the Opera astronomica minora of Ptolemy (1907), the tables themselves are only available in the old and rather unreliable edition of the Abbé Nicolas Halma (1822-1825). The present work constitutes the first volume of a critical edition of the astronomical tables. Volume PIOL 59b is devoted to the transcription of the tables and a commentary. The transcription isaccompanied by an apparatus which provides where necessary the correctly calculated entry. The commentary provides a study of the chronological background of the Era of Philip, a mathematical commentary on the tables of ascension (including the equation of time), and in a series appendices a review of Syriac and Arabic texts bearing on the handy tables.