accurate records for hundreds of years of new moons and eclipses. Some time between the years 500 BC and 400 BC they identified and began to use the 19 year cyclic relation between lunar months and solar years now known as the Metonic cycle. This helped them built up a numerical theory of the main irregularities in the Moon's motion, reaching remarkably good estimates for the (different) periods of the three most prominent features of the Moon's motion: The synodic month, i.e. the mean period for the phases of the Moon. Now called "System B", it reckons the synodic month as 29 days and (sexagesimally) 3,11;0,50 "time degrees", where each time degree is one degree of the apparent motion of the stars, or 4 minutes of time, and the sexagesimal values after the semicolon are fractions of a time degree. This converts to 29.530594 days = 29d 12h 44m 3.33s, to compare with a modern value (as at 1900 Jan 0) of 29.530589 days, or 29d 12h 44m 2.9s. This same value was used by Hipparchos and Ptolemy, was used throughout the Middle Ages, and still forms the basis of the Hebrew calendar. The mean lunar velocity relative to the stars they estimated at 13° 10′ 35″ per day, giving a corresponding month of 27.321598 days, to compare with modern values of 13° 10′ 35.0275″ and 27.321582 days. The anomalistic month, i.e. the mean period for the Moon's approximately monthly accelerations and decelerations in its rate of movement against the stars, had a Babylonian estimate of 27.5545833 days, to compare with a modern value 27.554551 days. The draconitic month, i.e. the mean period with which the path of the Moon against the stars deviates first north and then south in ecliptic latitude by comparison with the ecliptic path of the Sun, was indicated by a number of different parameters leading to various estimates, e.g. of 27.212204 days, to compare with a modern value of 27.212221, but the Babylonians also had a numerical relationship that 5458 synodic months were equal to 5923 draconitic months, which when compared with their accurate value for the synodic month leads to practically exactly the modern figure for the draconitic month. The Babylonian estimate for the synodic month was adopted for the greater part of two millennia by Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and medieval writers (and it is still in use as part of the basis for the