RT Article
T1 Stars without a Table: Planetary Horocrators from the Cairo Geniza
JF The Jewish quarterly review
VO 111
IS 3
SP 380
OP 388
A1 Bohak, Gideon
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1772107484
AB This essay describes a list of planetary horocrators—that is, the planets ruling each hour of the week—found in an eleventh-century manuscript from the Cairo Genizah. Four different fragments of this manuscript have thus far been identified, and they enable the reconstruction of the list's original layout. Such a list can easily be tabulated, but the medieval Jewish scribe who produced it preferred to spell it out in its entirety, and in a very disorganized manner. In part, this was because the Jews of medieval Cairo were more used to working with lists than with tables. But given his interest in various methods of divination (his manuscript also included a handbook of goralot, or lot-casting), our scribe may have deemed that the cumbersome and opaque layout of his list might enhance its perceived validity.
K1 Judeo-Arabic
K1 Tables
K1 Lists
K1 Lot-casting
K1 sortes
K1 goralot
K1 planetary horocrators
K1 Planets
K1 Divination
K1 Astrology
K1 Cairo Genizah
DO 10.1353/jqr.2021.0026