Ptolemaic and Chaldaean Bounds Validation — 2026-07-15

Scope

This record validates the tables selected by the non-Egyptian members of EgyptianBoundsDoctrine. It repairs two pre-existing label/data defects:

• PTOLEMAIC_BOUNDS duplicated EGYPTIAN_BOUNDS;
• CHALDEAN_BOUNDS did not implement the stated Chaldaean construction and concealed its day/night dependency.

The default Egyptian table and its lookup semantics are unchanged.

Authority and product semantics

The table authority is Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos I.20/I.21, translated by F. E. Robbins, Loeb Classical Library 435 (1940):

• "Terms according to the Egyptians," printed pp. 96-97;
• Chaldaean order, widths, and sect distinction, printed pp. 100-103;
• "Terms according to Ptolemy," printed pp. 108-109.

Online witnesses:

• LacusCurtius Robbins transcription
• Wikisource scan of Loeb 435

This is authority validation of a historical doctrinal table, not empirical validation of astrological effects.

Ptolemaic reconstruction decision

The admitted Ptolemaic table follows the five ruler/width pairs printed for each sign. The transcription displays Saturn twice in Libra, ending with a second six-degree Saturn segment. The chapter's immediately following totals resolve that transmitted symbol error: Saturn totals 57° and Mars 66° only when Libra's final six degrees belong to Mars. Moira therefore records Libra as:

1. Saturn [0, 6)
2. Venus [6, 11)
3. Mercury [11, 16)
4. Jupiter [16, 24)
5. Mars [24, 30)

The resulting global totals are:

Ruler	Degrees
Saturn	57
Jupiter	79
Mars	66
Venus	82
Mercury	76

They sum to 360° and match the source's stated totals.

Chaldaean construction decision

Ptolemy states a repeated triplicity order and assigns widths of 8°, 7°, 6°, 5°, and 4° in descending order. Saturn precedes Mercury by day; Mercury precedes Saturn by night. A single chaldean doctrine is therefore semantically incomplete.

Moira admits two explicit variants:

• chaldean_day
• chaldean_night

Their source-stated planetary totals are:

Ruler	Day	Night
Saturn	78	66
Jupiter	72	72
Mars	69	69
Venus	75	75
Mercury	66	78

Each column sums to 360°. The former ambiguous string chaldean is rejected by engine/transport enum validation rather than mapped to a hidden sect.

Boundary law

All four admitted tables use left-closed, right-open intervals [start, end). Every sign has exactly five positive-width segments covering [0, 30) with no gap or overlap. Longitudes are normalized modulo 360 before lookup.

Public visibility

The corrected doctrines are selectable through:

• moira.egyptian_bounds.EgyptianBoundsPolicy
• GET /v1/egyptian-bounds/table
• all /v1/egyptian-bounds/* requests that accept policy.doctrine

Table and bound-truth REST envelopes include the selected primary-source citation.

Validation commands

$env:MOIRA_TEST_MODE = "1"
$env:MOIRA_STRICT_KNOWN_ISSUES = "1"
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytest tests\unit\test_egyptian_bounds.py tests\unit\test_egyptian_bounds_public_api.py tests\server\test_server_egyptian_bounds_routes.py -q
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytest tests\unit\test_hellenistic_source_goldens.py -q -k bound

The targeted slice validates:

• the complete literal Ptolemaic table;
• all four 12-sign × 5-segment coverage invariants;
• Ptolemaic and Chaldaean planetary totals;
• Chaldaean day/night Saturn/Mercury reversal;
• exact left-closed/right-open boundaries;
• curated module exports;
• REST table and lookup serialization;
• source-citation visibility;
• rejection of the ambiguous legacy doctrine value.

Phase 6 added the independent hand-authored corpus at tests/golden/hellenistic_source_tables.json. It owns the complete Egyptian and Ptolemaic tables plus the Chaldaean construction rules and totals; tests exercise every segment start and midpoint for all four admitted doctrines. The runtime is never used to generate this source authority.