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Table of Contents
Unforgotten Sisters investigation
Background
I became aware of the Cosmos Magazine article The unforgotten sisters: Sonduk, the astronomer queen by Gabriella Bernardi (hereinafter “Cosmos Magazine article,” archived version https://archive.is/j7d1n ) from somewhat implausible claims about the ancient Korean monarch Seondeok (善德王, styled 聖祖皇姑) being discussed as fact on social media. These include the claims that the female king was an astronomer herself as a princess, had a Tang ambassador named Lin Fang as a tutor, and predicted a solar eclipse as a teenager.
I found out from reading the article that it was adapted from an earlier book by the same author, Gabriella Bernardi's The Unforgotten Sisters: Astronomers and Scientists before Caroline Herschel (2016 Springer Praxis, hereinafter “Unforgotten Sisters”) and read the relevant chapter on Seondeok in the book. The chapter made similar implausible claims that I had not seen in any historical record or non-fictional discussions of historical records.
To prevent the further spread of possible misinformation and to correct the record if necessary, I set out to discover the source of these assertions about Seondeok starting with the bibliography of Unforgotten Sisters. Suspicions about these claims and subsequent research were recorded contemporaneously on a Mastodon thread. This page and linked pages are a more formal documentation and expansion of the findings.
Dubious claims
The following are the claims in the Cosmos Magazine article and/or the Seondeok chapter of Unforgotten Sisters that I found dubious for not being found in recorded history:
- Votive jar dedicated to grandmother
- Claimed birth year of 610 CE
- Peony seed anecdote dated to seven years of age
- A Chinese ambassador named Lin Fang serving as her tutor
- Astronomer princess
- Solar eclipse prediction
- Begged her father to build an observatory
- Method of observation from Cheomseongdae
The problem with most of these claims are, at base, that they are not found in the known historical records from books such as the Samguk Sagi (三國史記, History of the Three Kingdoms) and Samguk Yusa (三國遺事, Stories from the Three Kingdoms). Some of the problems are elaborated in more detail below:
Claimed year of birth
Seondeok's years of rule and death are in the known historical record (r. 632-647, d. 647), but her birth year is not. Yet the Cosmos Magazine article states that “She was born in 610 CE,” while the Seondeok chapter of Unforgotten Sisters makes two conflicting claims in marking her birth year correctly in the title as unknown and then, just a few lines down near the beginning of the text, claiming her birth year as 610 AD.
Peony seed anecdote
The Cosmos Magazine article states:
At seven, for example, a box of peony seeds arrived at the Court, from China. ... Her observation about the peonies’ lack of smell proved correct – one illustration among many of her intelligence.
The anecdote itself is well-known and attested in both the Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa, but no record dates this specifically to when she was seven years of age as claimed by Bernardi. The Samguk Sagi states she made this prediction as a princess while her father was still king but does not pinpoint the age, while the Samguk Yusa states the episode took place during her own reign when she was likely much older than seven.
The construction of Cheomseongdae
The Cosmos Magazine article claims the following about the background for the construction of Cheomseongdae:
Sonduk had begged her father for several years to set out on its building, but eventually accomplished the challenge on her own.
As far as I know, however, no historical record on Cheomseongdae goes into this level of detail about the background of its construction. The first record on Cheomseongdae is the following line in the Samguk Yusa:
別記云是王代鍊石築瞻星臺 (A separate record states that it was in this King[ Seondeok]'s time that stone was shaped to build Cheomseongdae.)
- 三國遺事 記異卷第一 善德王知幾三事 (Stories from the Three Kingdoms, Extraordinary Events Book 1, Three Episodes of King Seondeok's Foreknowledge) Hangul translation / Scan of original record
Later records do not go into much more detail than the year of construction, either. There is some disagreement between records on when it was built, but they generally agree it was during Seondeok's time.
The method of observation from Cheomseongdae
The Cosmos Magazine article states:
According to the historical accounts, when astronomers were observing in Sonduk’s tower, they laid on their back and watched the celestial objects through four domes on the top, arranged in a square and oriented towards the four cardinal points.
This would be remarkable if true because there is no such historical account to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of many scholars over the centuries who have speculated on how Cheomseongdae was used for observation.1) If Bernardi can present a historical record in support of her assertion, of course, it would be a notable find. However, I personally could find no such record myself and could not trace it to any of the cited sources of Unforgotten Sisters that I could access.
Sources tracked
Women of Korea
- Yung-Chung Kim, Women of Korea: A History from Ancient Times to 1945 (2nd ed. 1977)
This book (hereinafter “Women of Korea”) was cited in the bibliography of Unforgotten Sisters and I read the parts relevant to Seondeok as a possible source for the unusual claims made by Bernardi. However, Women of Korea does not go beyond the known historical information on Seondeok and I could not find any mention of details unique to Unforgotten Sisters such as her passion for astronomy or having a Tang ambassador as a tutor. See Passages on Seondeok from Women of Korea (1977) for the transcribed contents of this book pertaining to Seondeok.
Sŏndŏk: Princess of the Moon and Stars
- Sheri Holman, Sŏndŏk: Princess of the Moon and Stars (2002)
Not directly cited in Unforgotten Sisters or the Cosmos Magazine article and found by independent search, this middle-grade novel (hereinafter “Princess of the Moon and Stars”) has many striking similarities with the assertions about Seondeok that I could not trace to any historical source. There are even passages with very similar wording.
The following is a chart of comparisons between quotes from the Cosmos Magazine article and Sŏndŏk: Princess of the Moon and Stars as seen in the Internet Archive:
| Cosmos Magazine article | Princess of the Moon and Stars |
|---|---|
| Will I ever know the truth about the stars? I’m too young to engage in theories about our Universe. I just know that I want to understand more. I want to know all I can. Why should it be forbidden? | Will we ever know the truth about the stars? I am too young to venture a theory about our universe, I only know that I want to understand more deeply. I want to know all I can know. Why should it be forbidden? (p. 77) |
| This sentence, found on a votive jar dedicated to her grandmother, had been written by a young girl, a Korean princess of the Silla Dynasty, when she was 15 years old. | [The princess, writing to her grandmother:] I have been thinking over my duties as a keeper of the Ancestor Jar, and I hope you will not grow angry with me if I slip in some of my own private thoughts. (p. 4) |
| she was very interested in astronomy in an era where no education was granted to women. | This is what I love most about studying astronomy, Grandmother. It is not just a science of planets and stars. It is a science about their marvelously complex relationships to one another. (pp. 5-6) |
| At seven, for example, a box of peony seeds arrived at the Court, from China. | “When [the princess] was but seven years old, the Emperor of China sent me a packet of peony seeds.” (p. 65) |
| her tutor, the Chinese ambassador Lin Fang, who was also an astronomer. | Word has reached me that the ambassador from China has arrived with the new official calendar. I've heard he is a great lover of astronomy and I hope to learn much from him during his stay. (pp. 4-5) Father has sent word that I may meet Lord Lin Fang (as I have learned the ambassador is called) when our court astronomers present our calendar tomorrow. (p. 11) Father has engaged Lin Fang as our tutor! (p. 50) |
| Sonduk, however, used to make observations every night and was mostly self-taught. | All night I measure the stars to understand their meaning for our kingdom. (p. 57) |
| Convinced of the necessity of a strictly domestic occupation for females, [Lin Fang] replied: “Surely you can’t think I can have a conversation on such important topics with a young woman! It would be unnatural and totally inappropriate.” | “I am happy to advise your father's astronomers, and you may tell them so, Lady Sŏndŏk,” Lord Lin Fang said frigidly. “But surely you cannot imagine I would converse on such a serious subject with a young lady? It would be unnatural, and wholly against the laws of propriety.” (p. 19) |
| during a solar eclipse that occurred in Korea, the young princess was able to predict the event and its duration with high accuracy | “It is mathematically impossible to have an eclipse in the tenth month of this year.” (p. 46) All week, people had been whispering that I could foretell the future because I correctly predicted that there would be no eclipse. (p. 154) |
| This angered the ambassador even more. He gave her another bit of advice: “Astronomy is not for women,” he said. “Do anything feminine, such as care of silkworms!” | When I appeared before Lin Fang for my lessons today, he dismissed me, saying, “The silkworms have need of you. Confucius would never want to stand in the way of a woman's duty to her worms.” (p. 69) |
| Eventually, this influential diplomat from a powerful neighbouring country managed to convince Sonduk’s father to preclude the princess from any further study of the stars. | “I tried to tell the Lady Sŏndŏk that astronomy is a difficult science,” Lord Lin Fang suddenly interjected, and his voice was thick and icy like the weather outside. “It should not be entrusted to a woman.” “Sŏndŏk fancies herself an astronomer,” said Father, casting an annoyed look my way. “She is a clever girl, but sometimes she oversteps her place.” (p. 47) |
| Sonduk had begged her father for several years to set out on [Cheomseongdae's] building, but eventually accomplished the challenge on her own. | It is my greatest desire to one day build an observatory here dedicated only to mapping the sky. I have hinted to Father that is what I want for my New Year's gift. (p. 9) “It is not an observatory,” he said, as I unwrapped a small red package. Inside was a lovely golden bracelet … I smiled weakly, trying to hide my disappointment … (p. 43) Every year I ask for the same thing–an observatory of my very own, and every year my Father pats my head like a child. (p. 44) |
Interestingly, Bernardi's assertion that an astronomer using Cheomseongdae laid on their back and watched the heavens through four domes is one of the few dubious claims that cannot be traced to Holman's Princess of the Moon and Stars, with Holman stating in the epilogue:
It is almost certain that a wooden platform made the tower even higher, but modern scientists are not absolutely sure as to how the tower was used. It is shrouded in mystery. (p. 161)
I am unsure about the strength of the wooden platform hypothesis, but at any rate this directly contradicts Bernardi's account. Furthermore, the acknowledgement of uncertainty over the specific mode of Cheomseongdae's usage is a much better-supported statement than a claim of historical records documenting a specific method, because no such record exists to the best of my knowledge.
Other sources
I looked through four other sources in the Unforgotten Sisters bibliography that might be relevant to Seondeok and that I had library access to, mostly biographical dictionaries of astronomers and scientists. I could not find any mention of her in these books, however.
I also looked through all the working links in the Web section of the bibliography and could not find Seondeok mentioned in any of them, either.
Tentative conclusions
- Almost all the dubious claims about Seondeok not found in the recorded history appear to be drawn uncited and uncredited from the novel Princess of the Moon and Stars. Other assertions with unclear factual support need either better sourcing or retraction.
- The Seondeok chapter in Unforgotten Sisters and the Cosmos Magazine article based on it should be retracted or corrected to remove the fictional material.
- If the chapter and article are left as they are, they should be marked or otherwise notified as largely fictional, and Ms. Holman's permission should be sought for the use, with appropriate credit, of fictional details she originated. She may also be due some form of apology, acknowledgement, and recompense.