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Proclus Diadochus confirms in his Comentario de Timeo IV that Egyptians knew about the precession of equinoxes before Hipparchus (2nd cent. BC) (Banjevic, 3) [18]

The citation provided for this statement is Krupp, "Ancient Skies," 26. However, pg. 26 of "AS" contains no reference to precession, being confined principally to a discussion of the Stretching of the Cord ceremony. (Banjevic's reference is possibly misplaced, perhaps intended to apply to the remainder of the relevant paragraph on pg. 3).

Proclus Diadochus, ostensibly the original source for the claim of a knowledge of precession pre-dating Hipparchus, was a Neoplatonist philosopher - [en.wikipedia.org].

In Comentario de Timeo IV [Trans.: Taylor, 1820] (275), [web.archive.org], Proclus writes:

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For the circle of the inerratic sphere, comprehends all motion, in whatever way it may be effected; but the advancing motion of the stars contained in it, evidently unfolds into light, the principle of a rectilinear progression; and the variety of the planets conducts and governs all the indefiniteness of generation, as proximately moving it in an all-various manner by their evolutions. Plato therefore, ascribes a motion of this kind to the fixed stars.

Let such however, as move them in consequentia, or with a retrograde motion, about the poles of the zodiac, through a portion of a hundred years, as Ptolemy and Hipparchus prior to him did, confiding in observations, know in the first place, that the Egyptians prior to these, employing observations, and still prior to the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, being taught by the Gods, prior to observations, were of a similar opinion with Plato, concerning the motion of the fixed stars. For the Oracles not once only but frequently speak of the advancing procession of the fixed stars.

But what is being discussed here is "procession," and not "precession," of the stars. Hipparchus is commonly accepted as the first to discover the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes - [en.wikipedia.org].

(Plato's view of the fixed stars is explained here - [en.wikipedia.org]).

So Banjevic's paper cites a modern authority who in fact makes no mention of the subject under discussion; and appears to have completely misread and/or misunderstood the ancient source.

Hermione
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