Transcriber’s Notes
Texts _between underscores_ and =between equal signs= represents text
printed in italics and bold face in the source document. Superscript
characters have been transcribed as ^{x}. Small capitals have been
transcribed as ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
ANCIENT CALENDARS
AND CONSTELLATIONS
ANCIENT CALENDARS
AND CONSTELLATIONS
BY THE HON. EMMELINE M. PLUNKET
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1903
PREFACE
The Papers here collected and reprinted, with some alterations, were
not originally written as a series; but they do, in fact, form one,
inasmuch as the opinions put forward in each Paper were arrived at, one
after the other, simply by following one leading clue.
This clue was furnished by a consideration of statements made by
Professor Sayce in an article contributed by him in 1874 to the
_Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_.
At page 150 he thus wrote:--
“The standard astrological work of the Babylonians and Assyrians
was one consisting of seventy tablets, drawn up for the Library of
Sargon, king of Agane, in the 16th century B.C.”
And again at page 237:--
“The Accadian Calendar was arranged so as to suit the order of the
Zodiacal signs; and Nisan, the first month, answered to the first
Zodiacal sign. Now the sun still entered the first point of Aries at
the vernal equinox in the time of Hipparkhus, and it would have done
so since 2540 B.C. From that epoch backwards to 4698 B.C. Taurus,
the second sign of the Accadian Zodiac, and the second month of the
Accadian year, would have introduced the spring. The precession
of the equinoxes thus enables us to fix the extreme limit of the
antiquity of the ancient Babylonian Calendar, and of the origin of
the Zodiacal signs in that country.”
Not many years after this sentence had been penned, archæologists, as
the result of much evidence, came to the firm conviction that the date
of Sargon of Agane was far earlier than had been at first supposed; and
it was placed by them, not “in the 16th century B.C.,” but at the high
date of 3800 B.C.
It was in endeavouring to account for the choice by Accadian
astronomers of Nisan as first month of the year, and of Aries as
first constellation of the Zodiac, at a date when that month and
constellation could not have “introduced the spring,” that a possible
solution of the difficulty presented itself to my mind--namely, the
supposition that the Accadian calendar had been originated when the
_winter solstice_, not the _spring equinox_, coincided with the sun’s
entry into the constellation Aries. This coincidence took place, as
astronomy teaches us, at the date, in round numbers, of 6000 B.C.
In the first Paper here reprinted this supposition was put forward; and
in the course of following, as above stated, the clue afforded by it,
the various subjects discussed in successive Papers claimed always more
insistently my attention, as by degrees detached pieces of information
concerning the calendars of ancient nations came to hand, and fitted
themselves, like the pieces of a dissected map, into one simple
chronological scheme.
The study of calendars marked by Zodiacal constellations necessitates
an acquaintance with the position of those constellations as they
were to be observed through the many ages during which they held the
important office of presiding over the year and its changing seasons.
Such acquaintanceship would have involved very careful and accurate
calculations were it not that, by the help of a precessional globe,
it was possible by easy mechanical adjustment to _see_, without
the trouble of thinking them out, what were the changes produced
in the scenery of nightly skies, millennium after millennium, by
the slow apparent revolution of the “Poles of heaven” through the
constellations--a revolution referred to by English astronomers as “the
precession of the equinoxes,” and more graphically and epigrammatically
by French astronomers as “le mouvement des fixes.”
In the second part of this book diagrams have been given, made from
a precessional globe, and in the explanatory notes which accompany
the Plates attention has been directed, not only to the chronological
problems which may be discussed with great advantage, as I believe, by
the help of such a globe, but also to various astronomical explanations
of ancient myths which occurred to me in the course of studying the
position of Zodiacal and extra-Zodiacal constellations at different
ages of the world’s history.
I can only read Classic and Oriental myths in translations, and I feel
very sure that if any of the astronomic explanations here suggested
for ancient legends should prove to be the right ones, scholars versed
in the original languages in which these legends were written, if they
supplement their linguistic knowledge by astronomic considerations,
will be able quickly and with ease to develop the suggested
explanations much further than it has been possible for me to do; and
explanations of other astronomic myths--astronomic, that is, and not
merely solar myths--will doubtless come to their minds as they follow
similar lines of enquiry.
The steps by which travellers arrive at a far-reaching view are often
very steep and arduous. I fear that many readers of this book will find
the separate Papers in it dull and technical in themselves; but if they
be considered only as steep and roughly-cut steps leading up to vantage
points of chronological and historical observation, I believe that the
ruggedness of the path will soon be forgotten in the absorbing interest
of the results to be obtained by following it.
CONTENTS
PART I
PAGE
I. THE ACCADIAN CALENDAR 1
II. THE CONSTELLATION ARIES 24
III. _GU_, ELEVENTH CONSTELLATION OF THE ZODIAC 44
IV. THE MEDIAN CALENDAR AND THE CONSTELLATION TAURUS 56
V. ASTRONOMY IN THE RIG VEDA 88
VI. NOTES.--AHURA MAZDA, ETC. 149
VII. ANCIENT INDIAN ASTRONOMY 162
VIII. THE CHINESE CALENDAR, WITH SOME REMARKS WITH REFERENCE TO
THAT OF THE CHALDEANS 185