The Terror, Beauty, and Community of Eclipses
3,000 years of fascination with the disappearing sun
In 180 BCE, a 23-year-old ascended to the throne of China. The young emperor, who took the name Wen as he came to power, was — like a lot of rulers in history — both immensely powerful and in a precarious position.
After the harsh rule of the Qin Dynasty and a terrible civil war, Wen’s father, Gaozu, founded the Han Dynasty in 202 BCE. His rule stabilized China but did not last long. When Gaozu died, his wife (generally referred to as Empress Lu) ruled over China for a decade and a half. Later historians record this as a terrible time, during which Empress Lu committed many terrible acts and installed members of her family in key positions of power. Her bad reputation, however, may have been as much a reflection of the fact that she was the most powerful woman in Chinese history up to that time as it was of her behavior.
When the empress died, a group of conspirators that she had shut out of power executed a coup and murdered the people she had elevated. Other members of the royal family committed suicide or died in prison. Once the killing was done, the conspirators made young Emperor Wen, a royal whose youth had allowed him to steer clear of the ugliness, the ruler of China. Understandably, he may not have wanted the job — Wen hesitated before accepting.
Very soon after his ascension to the throne, Wen faced a crisis: the sun disappeared.
Solar eclipses were a very big deal in ancient China. Chinese astronomers had been assiduously recording eclipses for at least 1,000 years by this point. The mythological explanation was that a dragon was devouring the sun; people were encouraged to bang drums during an eclipse to frighten the dragon away.
Some of our earliest records of eclipses come from Chinese “oracle bones,” which sought meaning in celestial events. This example records a lunar eclipse on December 27, 1192 BCE:
Ancient Chinese rulers were thought to reign with the “Mandate of Heaven” — the idea that the gods backed their rule. This concept was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Chinese emperors could claim that they were meant to occupy the throne; on the other, the gods could show their displeasure with the ruler by sending “calamities” down on China. These calamities could range from natural disasters like earthquakes to bad losses in battle. One of the clearest ways for the gods to express their anger was to make the sun go away.
So, when a solar eclipse took place in 178 BCE, Wen must have feared that his reign, and perhaps his life, was over. The gods had sent a message that it was permissible to overthrow him, and this omen had come in an already turbulent time.
He reacted to the event by issuing a remarkable edict to his advisors:
I have heard that Heaven installs rulers to govern the people it creates and that it will warn a ruler with natural disasters if he has lost virtue or if his rule has become unjust.
On the eleventh month of this year there was an eclipse of the sun. No natural disaster can be more serious than this: Heaven has reproached me! …
I am solely responsible for all occurrences on earth, be they good or evil. In administering the vast empire, I am assisted by some of my closest minister-advisors.
I have lost my virtue indeed as my inability to take care of my people has aroused the wrath of the sun, the moon and the stars. Let it be known that immediately after this decree is issued, all of you should think seriously about my shortcomings and inform me on the happenings that I have not been able to hear and see myself. Report your findings to me directly!
Dun J. Li. The Essence of Chinese Civilization. New York: Van Nostrand, 1967, 116-117.
Can you imagine any other powerful leader in history saying something like this? Would Julius Caesar have asked his subjects to tell him what he was doing wrong? Would Napoleon have exclaimed, “Heaven has reproached me?”
Wen reacted to the eclipse by listening to his advisors, cutting taxes, and giving his subjects more freedom in an effort to hold onto the throne. The strategy worked. Wen survived the incident and became one of China’s most revered emperors. He ruled for over two decades, setting an example of tolerance and benevolence for his successors. Following Wen’s model, the Han Dynasty would last for four centuries, becoming one of China’s great golden ages.
Perhaps a little credit for the wise leadership of Wen and the success of the Han Dynasty can go to those few minutes of daytime darkness when the sun disappeared and Wen feared the worst.
Total solar eclipses usually darken a given location on Earth about once every 400 years, so the coming April 8 eclipse will be a once-in-a-lifetime event for those of us in the American Midwest and Northeast. The temporary disappearance of the sun will be a fun opportunity to experience something rare. We’ll build some homemade eclipse viewers and stagger out into the parking lots of our offices and schools to gawk at the oddness of darkness during the day. Then we’ll likely trundle back inside and get on with our day.
But, as we saw in the story of Emperor Wen, eclipses carried more weight in ancient times. Many societies saw eclipses as the forces of darkness defeating the sun.
Solar eclipses were considered such powerful omens in ancient Assyria that rulers would appoint a “substitute king” for a day during an eclipse. That way, the misfortune that accompanied the eclipse would befall the hapless substitute and not the real ruler. If you thought it might be fun to be king for a day, think again — when the eclipse ended and all was safe, they’d kill the substitute king.
Egyptians understood eclipses as the great serpent, Apophis, preventing Ra, the sun god, from making his way across the sky in a barge. Priests and their congregants prayed fervently for the defeat of Apophis during eclipses. The battle was considered to be quite intense — here’s an Egyptian papyrus depicting Ra (in the form of a cat) showing Apophis who’s boss:
In Hindu mythology, a demon named Rahu tried to steal the gods’ nectar, only to be caught and beheaded by Vishnu. Here’s Rahu, looking hungry:
The decapitation must have been a vigorous one because Rahu’s head sailed perpetually through the heavens. When Rahu crossed paths with the sun, he swallowed it, creating an eclipse; but, being a decapitated head, he couldn’t really digest the sun. It came out through his severed throat, making all eclipses temporary.
This relief from the 700s shows Rahu lying in wait next to various celestial bodies — the sun, moon, and planets. A comet (indicated by its tail) is to his right:
Because eclipses were important religious events, most ancient civilizations kept track of them very carefully. We have Mesopotamian tablets that record eclipse dates from the 1200s BCE. This one chronicles an eclipse that was seen as an omen before the Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great defeated the Persians in 331 BCE:
This Egyptian Zodiac, dating to 50 BCE, has been shown to record a solar eclipse that happened on March 7, 51. It’s represented by Isis holding Thoth (the god of the moon) in a circle.
Across the Atlantic, the Mayans were obsessed with the comings and goings of the sun, and they recorded eclipses very carefully. They, too, viewed eclipses as perilous moments that required intense rituals and sacrifice — even human bloodletting. These pages of the Dresden Codex serve as part of a table of eclipse warnings that predict eclipses through the year 2140:
The ancient Greeks were also quite interested in eclipses. The philosopher Thales was given credit for predicting an eclipse in 585 BCE. The same eclipse supposedly stopped a war between the Medes and Lydians. According to Herodotus:
… day was all of sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold by Thales, the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the very year in which it took place. The Medes and the Lydians when they observed the change, ceased fighting, and were alike anxious to have terms of peace agreed on.
The Greeks might have invented the first eclipse-prediction machine. The Antikythera Mechanism, often regarded as the world’s first analog computer, may have been used to calculate the dates for eclipses and other celestial events:
By the medieval period, people were starting to sketch out how eclipses happened. Scholars like Johannes Sacro Bosco put the moon between the Sun and the Earth, showing the shadow cone emanating from the Moon. Given that this diagram dates from the 1200s, the Earth is, of course, at the center of the Solar System. I also very much enjoy the little animals he’s put in there to adorn the Moon’s orbit:
There’s something attractive about the eclipse diagram, with all of the geometric shapes. I really like this one, from 1711, showing that the roundness of the Earth can be proven by the shape of its shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse:
I also like this Dutch diagram from 1820:
The first person to map the path of an eclipse was Edmund Halley (he of the comet), who made one in 1715, showing where in England people could view the event:
People also tried to capture the optical effects of an eclipse, often with spectacular results. Early photographers were drawn to eclipses, probably because, with a camera, you didn’t have to look at the eclipse to capture it. Here’s a very early series of eclipse photos from 1854:
And another image from 1871:
This photo was the result of a group of astronomers traveling to Caroline Island in the remote Pacific in 1883:
But sometimes drawings captured the magic of an eclipse best. Here’s an 1878 sketch by the great popularizer of astronomy, E.L. Trouvelot:
Once people understood the science of an eclipse and didn’t think the sun was going to be eaten by a monster or whatever, eclipses became opportunities to wonder at the beauty of the celestial world. The problem is that everybody knows you’re not supposed to look directly at an eclipse (some of us have a harder time following that rule than others).
The tension between the desire to look at a stunning astronomical phenomenon and the knowledge that you really shouldn’t is evident in a lot of eclipse art. We see it in the 1624 woodcut of an angel and a child:
And this 1869 work by Felix Bracquemond:
Eclipses are an occasion for people to gather and share in an unusual experience, as in this 1654 etching (I like the little face on the Moon in this otherwise realistic image):
Or this one from 1851 in France:
Or this 1911 photo, also from France:
Even important people change their plans for an eclipse. Here’s Calvin Coolidge using proper technique, looking through darkened glass at an eclipse in 1925:
I saved one image for last, a drawing by Charles Blauvelt from 1859:
This one, as much as any other, captures the way a lot of us feel during an eclipse. However old you are, if you are fortunate enough to be in the path of an eclipse, it’s hard to resist a sense of childlike wonder at what’s happening up in the heavens. It’s supposed to be a bright afternoon, but it’s dark outside. You want to look, but you know you have to take precautions. You know you only have a few minutes to soak it all in, so you try to capture as much as you can of the event. You don’t want to miss it — it’s literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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Haha! I knew that DJT would show up towards the end. Well done.