<HTML>Dear Joanne...If I knew your last name perhaps I could check out the corespondence that you mention that indicated that I had not read some very important Egyptian texts...or texts on Egyptology. That is much like waving a red flag...and if the texts were really important and known to the scholarly community I am confused as to what on earth they would have been. Please refresh my memory of our correspondence and enlighten me.
As for using eclipse programs to give firm dates for ancient eclipses...as anyone who has read either of my editions, I have written repeatedly that no one can ever (and I stress the word ever) give firm or accurate dates for these because the changes in the rotational speed of the earth make the value for Ephemeris Time in the formula one uses, much subject to error.
That is not to say that the exact date that eclipses occur cannot be known, rather, it is the geographical location over which the path of totality will travel that is uncertain. This path can only be be based on formulas that, unfortunately, lack certainty because of our lack of knowledge of earth's deceleration (or even acceleration) in the past. The formulas we use do change as researchers unearth certain facts. (ie. L. V. Morrison and F. R. Stephenson's work on Babylonian and Arabian eclipse records to make a determination of earth's deceleration back to 700 BC.)
In explanation to those who have not read my book, using a very commonly used formula, I found a sequence of 80 years of total eclipses predicted to have occured over pre-dynastic settlements up and down the Nile, a sequence that closely matched, in many details, the Egyptian story of Eighty Years of Contending between Horus and Seth. I suggested it as the origin for that story. However, I concluded with this statement: "I must emphasize again that I have demonstrated only that such a sequence can take place. In the 23rd century, six (!)total eclipses will be visible from the US in a 19 year period, from 2245 through 2263. Jane</HTML>
