ASTROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
Culture and Superstition--Primitive Star Myths--Naturalism,
Totemism, and Animism--Stars as Ghosts of Men, Giants, and Wild
Animals--Gods as Constellations and Planets--Babylonian and Egyptian
Mysticism--Osiris, Tammuz, and Merodach--Ishtar and Isis as Bisexual
Deities--The Babylonian Planetary Deities--Planets as Forms of
Tammuz and Ghosts of Gods--The Signs of the Zodiac--The "Four
Quarters"--Cosmic Periods in Babylonia, India, Greece, and
Ireland--Babylonian System of Calculation--Traced in Indian Yuga
System--Astrology--Beliefs of the Masses--Rise of
Astronomy--Conflicting Views of Authorities--Greece and
Babylonia--Eclipses Foretold--The Dial of Ahaz--Omens of Heaven and
Air--Biblical References to Constellations--The Past in the Present.
The empire builders of old who enriched themselves with the spoils of
war and the tribute of subject States, not only satisfied personal
ambition and afforded protection for industrious traders and workers,
but also incidentally promoted culture and endowed research. When a
conqueror returned to his capital laden with treasure, he made
generous gifts to the temples. He believed that his successes were
rewards for his piety, that his battles were won for him by his god or
goddess of war. It was necessary, therefore, that he should continue
to find favour in the eyes of the deity who had been proved to be more
powerful than the god of his enemies. Besides, he had to make
provision during his absence on long campaigns, or while absorbed in
administrative work, for the constant performance of religious rites,
so that the various deities of water, earth, weather, and corn might
be sustained or propitiated with sacrificial offerings, or held in
magical control by the performance of ceremonial rites. Consequently
an endowed priesthood became a necessity in all powerful and
well-organized states.
Thus came into existence in Babylonia, as elsewhere, as a result of
the accumulation of wealth, a leisured official class, whose duties
tended to promote intellectual activity, although they were primarily
directed to perpetuate gross superstitious practices. Culture was
really a by-product of temple activities; it flowed forth like pure
gold from furnaces of thought which were walled up by the crude ores
of magic and immemorial tradition.
No doubt in ancient Babylonia, as in Europe during the Middle Ages,
the men of refinement and intellect among the upper classes were
attracted to the temples, while the more robust types preferred the
outdoor life, and especially the life of the soldier.[302] The
permanent triumphs of Babylonian civilization were achieved either by
the priests, or in consequence of the influence they exercised. They
were the grammarians and the scribes, the mathematicians and the
philosophers of that ancient country, the teachers of the young, and
the patrons of the arts and crafts. It was because the temples were
centres of intellectual activity that the Sumerian language remained
the language of culture for long centuries after it ceased to be the
everyday speech of the people.
Reference has already been made to the growth of art, and the
probability that all the arts had their origin in magical practices,
and to the growth of popular education necessitated by the
centralization of business in the temples. It remains with us to deal
now with priestly contributions to the more abstruse sciences. In
India the ritualists among the Brahmans, who concerned themselves
greatly regarding the exact construction and measurements of altars,
gave the world algebra; the pyramid builders of Egypt, who erected
vast tombs to protect royal mummies, had perforce to lay the
groundwork of the science of geometry; and the Babylonian priests who
elaborated the study of astrology became great astronomers because
they found it necessary to observe and record accurately the movements
of the heavenly bodies.
From the earliest times of which we have knowledge, the religious
beliefs of the Sumerians had vague stellar associations. But it does
not follow that their myths were star myths to begin with. A people
who called constellations "the ram", "the bull", "the lion", or "the
scorpion", did not do so because astral groups suggested the forms of
animals, but rather because the animals had an earlier connection with
their religious life.
At the same time it should be recognized that the mystery of the stars
must ever have haunted the minds of primitive men. Night with all its
terrors appealed more strongly to their imaginations than refulgent
day when they felt more secure; they were concerned most regarding
what they feared most. Brooding in darkness regarding their fate, they
evidently associated the stars with the forces which influenced their
lives--the ghosts of ancestors, of totems, the spirits that brought
food or famine and controlled the seasons. As children see images in a
fire, so they saw human life reflected in the starry sky. To the
simple minds of early folks the great moon seemed to be the parent of
the numerous twinkling and moving orbs. In Babylon, indeed, the moon
was regarded as the father not only of the stars but of the sun also;
there, as elsewhere, lunar worship was older than solar worship.
Primitive beliefs regarding the stars were of similar character in
various parts of the world. But the importance which they assumed in
local mythologies depended in the first place on local phenomena. On
the northern Eur-Asian steppes, for instance, where stars vanished
during summer's blue nights, and were often obscured by clouds in
winter, they did not impress men's minds so persistently and deeply as
in Babylonia, where for the greater part of the year they gleamed in
darkness through a dry transparent atmosphere with awesome intensity.
The development of an elaborate system of astral myths, besides, was
only possible in a country where the people had attained to a high
degree of civilization, and men enjoyed leisure and security to make
observations and compile records. It is not surprising, therefore, to
find that Babylonia was the cradle of astronomy. But before this
science had destroyed the theory which it was fostered to prove, it
lay smothered for long ages in the debris of immemorial beliefs. It is
necessary, therefore, in dealing with Babylonian astral myths to
endeavour to approach within reasonable distance of the point of view,
or points of view, of the people who framed them.
Babylonian religious thought was of highly complex character. Its
progress was ever hampered by blended traditions. The earliest
settlers in the Tigro-Euphrates valley no doubt imported many crude
beliefs which they had inherited from their Palaeolithic
ancestors--the modes of thought which were the moulds of new theories
arising from new experiences. When consideration is given to the
existing religious beliefs of various peoples throughout the world, in
low stages of culture, it is found that the highly developed creeds of
Babylonia, Egypt and other countries where civilization flourished
were never divested wholly of their primitive traits.
Among savage peoples two grades of religious ideas have been
identified, and classified as Naturalism and Animism. In the plane of
Naturalism the belief obtains that a vague impersonal force, which may
have more than one manifestation and is yet manifested in everything,
controls the world and the lives of human beings. An illustration of
this stage of religious consciousness is afforded by Mr. Risley, who,
in dealing with the religion of the jungle dwellers of Chota Nagpur,
India, says that "in most cases the indefinite something which they
fear and attempt to propitiate is not a person at all in any sense of
the word; if one must state the case in positive terms, I should say
that the idea which lies at the root of their religion is that of a
power rather than many powers".[303]
Traces of Naturalism appear to have survived in Sumeria in the belief
that "the spiritual, the Zi, was that which manifested life.... The
test of the manifestation of life was movement."[304] All things that
moved, it was conceived in the plane of Naturalism, possessed "self
power"; the river was a living thing, as was also the fountain; a
stone that fell from a hill fell of its own accord; a tree groaned
because the wind caused it to suffer pain. This idea that inanimate
objects had conscious existence survived in the religion of the
Aryo-Indians. In the Nala story of the Indian epic, the _Mahabharata_,
the disconsolate wife Damayanti addresses a mountain when searching
for her lost husband:
"This, the monarch of all mountains, ask I of the king of men;
O all-honoured Prince of Mountains, with thy heavenward soaring
peaks ...
Hast thou seen the kingly Nala in this dark and awful wood....
Why repliest thou not, O Mountain?"
She similarly addresses the Asoka tree:
"Hast thou seen Nishadha's monarch, hast thou seen my only
love?...
That I may depart ungrieving, fair Asoka, answer me...."
Many a tree she stood and gazed on....[305]
It will be recognized that when primitive men gave names to mountains,
rivers, or the ocean, these possessed for them a deeper significance
than they do for us at the present day. The earliest peoples of
Indo-European speech who called the sky "dyeus", and those of Sumerian
speech who called it "ana", regarded it not as the sky "and nothing
more", but as something which had conscious existence and "self
power". Our remote ancestors resembled, in this respect, those
imaginative children who hold conversations with articles of
furniture, and administer punishment to stones which, they believe,
have tripped them up voluntarily and with desire to commit an offence.
In this early stage of development the widespread totemic beliefs
appear to have had origin. Families or tribes believed that they were
descended from mountains, trees, or wild animals.
Aesop's fable about the mountain which gave birth to a mouse may be a
relic of Totemism; so also may be the mountain symbols on the
standards of Egyptian ships which appear on pre-dynastic pottery; the
black dwarfs of Teutonic mythology were earth children.[306]
Adonis sprang from a tree; his mother may have, according to primitive
belief, been simply a tree; Dagda, the patriarchal Irish corn god, was
an oak; indeed, the idea of a "world tree", which occurs in Sumerian,
Vedic-Indian, Teutonic, and other mythologies, was probably a product
of Totemism.
Wild animals were considered to be other forms of human beings who
could marry princes and princesses as they do in so many fairy tales.
Damayanti addressed the tiger, as well as the mountain and tree,
saying:
I approach him without fear.
"Of the beasts art thou the monarch, all this forest thy
domain;...
Thou, O king of beasts, console me, if my Nala thou hast
seen."[307]
A tribal totem exercised sway over a tribal district. In Egypt, as
Herodotus recorded, the crocodile was worshipped in one district and
hunted down in another. Tribes fought against tribes when totemic
animals were slain. The Babylonian and Indian myths about the
conflicts between eagles and serpents may have originated as records
of battles between eagle clans and serpent clans. Totemic animals were
tabooed. The Set pig of Egypt and the devil pig of Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales were not eaten except sacrificially. Families were supposed
to be descended from swans and were named Swans, or from seals and
were named Seals, like the Gaelic "Mac Codrums", whose surname
signifies "son of the seal"; the nickname of the Campbells, "sons of
the pig", may refer to their totemic boar's head crest, which
commemorated the slaying, perhaps the sacrificial slaying, of the boar
by their ancestor Diarmid. Mr. Garstang, in _The Syrian Goddess_,
thinks it possible that the boar which killed Adonis was of totemic
origin. So may have been the fish form of the Sumerian god Ea. When an
animal totem was sacrificed once a year, and eaten sacrificially so
that the strength of the clan might be maintained, the priest who
wrapped himself in its skin was supposed to have transmitted to him
certain magical powers; he became identified with the totem and
prophesied and gave instruction as the totem. Ea was depicted clad in
the fish's skin.
Animism, the other early stage of human development, also produced
distinctive modes of thought. Men conceived that the world swarmed
with spirits, that a spirit groaned in the wind-shaken tree, that the
howling wind was an invisible spirit, that there were spirits in
fountains, rivers, valleys, hills, and in ocean, and in all animals;
and that a hostile spirit might possess an individual and change his
nature. The sun and the moon were the abodes of spirits, or the
vessels in which great spirits sailed over the sea of the sky; the
stars were all spirits, the "host of heaven". These spirits existed in
groups of seven, or groups of three, and the multiple of three, or in
pairs, or operated as single individuals.
Although certain spirits might confer gifts upon mankind, they were at
certain seasons and in certain localities hostile and vengeful, like
the grass-green fairies in winter, or the earth-black elves when their
gold was sought for in forbidden and secret places. These spirits were
the artisans of creation and vegetation, like the Egyptian Khnumu and
the Indian Rhibus; they fashioned the grass blades and the stalks of
corn, but at times of seasonal change they might ride on their tempest
steeds, or issue forth from flooding rivers and lakes. Man was greatly
concerned about striking bargains with them to secure their services,
and about propitiating them, or warding off their attacks with
protective charms, and by performing "ceremonies of riddance". The
ghosts of the dead, being spirits, were similarly propitious or
harmful on occasion; as emissaries of Fate they could injure the
living.
Ancestor worship, the worship of ghosts, had origin in the stage of
Animism. But ancestor worship was not developed in Babylonia as in
China, for instance, although traces of it survived in the worship of
stars as ghosts, in the deification of kings, and the worship of
patriarchs, who might be exalted as gods or identified with a supreme
god. The Egyptian Pharaoh Unas became the sun god and the
constellation of Orion by devouring his predecessors[308]. He ate his
god as a tribe ate its animal totem; he became the "bull of heaven".
There were star totems as well as mountain totems. A St. Andrew's
cross sign, on one of the Egyptian ship standards referred to, may
represent a star. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar was symbolized as a
star, and she was the "world mother". Many primitive currents of
thought shaped the fretted rocks of ancient mythologies.
In various countries all round the globe the belief prevailed that the
stars were ghosts of the mighty dead--of giants, kings, or princes, or
princesses, or of pious people whom the gods loved, or of animals
which were worshipped. A few instances may be selected at random. When
the Teutonic gods slew the giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens
as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were
semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear,
which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the
seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece the Pleiades
were the ghosts of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and in
Australia they were and are a queen and six handmaidens. In these
countries, as elsewhere, stories were told to account for the "lost
Pleiad", a fact which suggests that primitive men were more constant
observers of the heavenly bodies than might otherwise be supposed. The
Arcadians believed that they were descended, as Hesiod recorded, from
a princess who was transformed by Zeus into a bear; in this form
Artemis slew her and she became the "Great Bear" of the sky. The
Egyptian Isis was the star Sirius, whose rising coincided with the
beginning of the Nile inundation. Her first tear for the dead Osiris
fell into the river on "the night of the drop". The flood which ensued
brought the food supply. Thus the star was not only the Great Mother
of all, but the sustainer of all.
The brightest stars were regarded as being the greatest and most
influential. In Babylonia all the planets were identified with great
deities. Jupiter, for instance, was Merodach, and one of the astral
forms of Ishtar was Venus. Merodach was also connected with "the fish
of Ea" (Pisces), so that it is not improbable that Ea worship had
stellar associations. Constellations were given recognition before the
planets were identified.
A strange blending of primitive beliefs occurred when the deities were
given astral forms. As has been shown (Chapter III) gods were supposed
to die annually. The Egyptian priests pointed out to Herodotus the
grave of Osiris and also his star. There are "giants' graves" also in
those countries in which the gods were simply ferocious giants. A god
might assume various forms; he might take the form of an insect, like
Indra, and hide in a plant, or become a mouse, or a serpent, like the
gods of Erech in the Gilgamesh epic. The further theory that a god
could exist in various forms at one and the same time suggests that it
had its origin among a people who accepted the idea of a personal god
while yet in the stage of Naturalism. In Egypt Osiris, for instance,
was the moon, which came as a beautiful child each month and was
devoured as the wasting "old moon" by the demon Set; he was the young
god who was slain in his prime each year; he was at once the father,
husband, and son of Isis; he was the Patriarch who reigned over men
and became the Judge of the Dead; he was the earth spirit, he was the
bisexual Nile spirit, he was the spring sun; he was the Apis bull of
Memphis, and the ram of Mendes; he was the reigning Pharaoh. In his
fusion with Ra, who was threefold--Khepera, Ra, and Tum--he died each
day as an old man; he appeared in heaven at night as the constellation
Orion, which was his ghost, or was, perhaps, rather the Sumerian Zi,
the spiritual essence of life. Osiris, who resembled Tammuz, a god of
many forms also, was addressed as follows in one of the Isis chants:
There proceedeth from thee the strong Orion in heaven at evening,
at the resting of every day!
Lo it is I (Isis), at the approach of the Sothis (Sirius) period,
who doth watch for him (the child Osiris),
Nor will I leave off watching for him; for that which proceedeth
from thee (the living Osiris) is revered.
An emanation from thee causeth life to gods and men, reptiles and
animals, and they live by means thereof.
Come thou to us from thy chamber, in the day when thy soul
begetteth emanations,--
The day when offerings upon offerings are made to thy spirit,
which causeth the gods and men likewise to live.[309]
This extract emphasizes how unsafe it is to confine certain deities
within narrow limits by terming them simply "solar gods", "lunar
gods", "astral gods", or "earth gods". One deity may have been
simultaneously a sun god and moon god, an air god and an earth god,
one who was dead and also alive, unborn and also old. The priests of
Babylonia and Egypt were less accustomed to concrete and logical
definitions than their critics and expositors of the twentieth
century. Simple explanations of ancient beliefs are often by reason of
their very simplicity highly improbable. Recognition must ever be
given to the puzzling complexity of religious thought in Babylonia and
Egypt, and to the possibility that even to the priests the doctrines
of a particular cult, which embraced the accumulated ideas of
centuries, were invariably confusing and vague, and full of
inconsistencies; they were mystical in the sense that the
understanding could not grasp them although it permitted their
acceptance. A god, for instance, might be addressed at once in the
singular and plural, perhaps because he had developed from an
animistic group of spirits, or, perhaps, for reasons we cannot
discover. This is shown clearly by the following pregnant extract from
a Babylonian tablet: "_Powerful, O Sevenfold, one are ye_". Mr. L.W.
King, the translator, comments upon it as follows: "There is no doubt
that the name was applied to a group of gods who were so closely
connected that, though addressed in the plural, they could in the same
sentence be regarded as forming a single personality".[310]
Like the Egyptian Osiris, the Babylonian Merodach was a highly complex
deity. He was the son of Ea, god of the deep; he died to give origin
to human life when he commanded that his head should be cut off so
that the first human beings might be fashioned by mixing his blood
with the earth; he was the wind god, who gave "the air of life"; he
was the deity of thunder and the sky; he was the sun of spring in his
Tammuz character; he was the daily sun, and the planets Jupiter and
Mercury as well as Sharru (Regulus); he had various astral
associations at various seasons. Ishtar, the goddess, was Iku
(Capella), the water channel star, in January-February, and Merodach
was Iku in May-June. This strange system of identifying the chief
deity with different stars at different periods, or simultaneously,
must not be confused with the monotheistic identification of him with
other gods. Merodach changed his forms with Ishtar, and had similarly
many forms. This goddess, for instance, was, even when connected with
one particular heavenly body, liable to change. According to a tablet
fragment she was, as the planet Venus, "a female at sunset and a male
at sunrise[311]"--that is, a bisexual deity like Nannar of Ur, the
father and mother deity combined, and Isis of Egypt. Nannar is
addressed in a famous hymn:
Father Nannar, Lord, God Sin, ruler among the gods....
_Mother body which produceth all things_....
Merciful, gracious Father, in whose hand the life of the whole
land is contained.
One of the Isis chants of Egypt sets forth, addressing Osiris:
There cometh unto thee Isis, lady of the horizon, who hath
begotten herself alone in the image of the gods....
She hath taken vengeance before Horus, _the woman who was made a
male by her father Osiris_.[312]
Merodach, like Osiris-Sokar, was a "lord of many existences", and
likewise "the mysterious one, he who is unknown to mankind[313]". It
was impossible for the human mind "a greater than itself to know".
Evidence has not yet been forthcoming to enable us to determine the
period at which the chief Babylonian deities were identified with the
planets, but it is clear that Merodach's ascendancy in astral form
could not have occurred prior to the rise of that city god of Babylon
as chief of the pantheon by displacing Enlil. At the same time it must
be recognized that long before the Hammurabi age the star-gazers of
the Tigro-Euphrates valley must have been acquainted with the
movements of the chief planets and stars, and, no doubt, they
connected them with seasonal changes as in Egypt, where Isis was
identified with Sirius long before the Ptolemaic age, when Babylonian
astronomy was imported. Horus was identified not only with the sun but
also with Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars.[314] Even the primitive
Australians, as has been indicated, have their star myths; they refer
to the stars Castor and Pollux as two young men, like the ancient
Greeks, while the African Bushmen assert that these stars are two
girls. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the prehistoric
Sumerians were exact astronomers. Probably they were, like the
Aryo-Indians of the Vedic period, "not very accurate observers".[315]
It is of special interest to find that the stars were grouped by the
Babylonians at the earliest period in companies of seven. The
importance of this magical number is emphasized by the group of seven
demons which rose from the deep to rage over the land (p. 71). Perhaps
the sanctity of Seven was suggested by Orion, the Bears, and the
Pleiad, one of which constellations may have been the "Sevenfold"
deity addressed as "one". At any rate arbitrary groupings of other
stars into companies of seven took place, for references are made to
the seven Tikshi, the seven Lumashi, and the seven Mashi, which are
older than the signs of the Zodiac; so far as can be ascertained these
groups were selected from various constellations. When the five
planets were identified, they were associated with the sun and moon
and connected with the chief gods of the Hammurabi pantheon. A
bilingual list in the British Museum arranges the sevenfold planetary
group in the following order:--
The moon, Sin.
The sun, Shamash.
Jupiter, Merodach.
Venus, Ishtar.
Saturn, Ninip (Nirig).
Mercury, Nebo.
Mars, Nergal.
An ancient name of the moon was Aa, Â, or Ai, which recalls the
Egyptian Aâh or Ah. The Sumerian moon was Aku, "the measurer", like
Thoth of Egypt, who in his lunar character as a Fate measured out the
lives of men, and was a god of architects, mathematicians, and
scribes. The moon was the parent of the sun or its spouse; and might
be male, or female, or both as a bisexual deity.
As the "bull of light" Jupiter had solar associations; he was also the
shepherd of the stars, a title shared by Tammuz as Orion; Nin-Girsu, a
developed form of Tammuz, was identified with both Orion and Jupiter.
Ishtar's identification with Venus is of special interest. When that
planet was at its brightest phase, its rays were referred to as "the
beard" of the goddess; she was the "bearded Aphrodite"--a bisexual
deity evidently. The astrologers regarded the bright Venus as lucky
and the rayless Venus as unlucky.
Saturn was Nirig, who is best known as Ninip, a deity who was
displaced by Enlil, the elder Bel, and afterwards regarded as his son.
His story has not been recovered, but from the references made to it
there is little doubt that it was a version of the widespread myth
about the elder deity who was slain by his son, as Saturn was by
Jupiter and Dyaus by Indra. It may have resembled the lost Egyptian
myth which explained the existence of the two Horuses--Horus the
elder, and Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris. At any rate, it is of
interest to find in this connection that in Egypt the planet Saturn
was Her-Ka, "Horus the Bull". Ninip was also identified with the bull.
Both deities were also connected with the spring sun, like Tammuz, and
were terrible slayers of their enemies. Ninip raged through Babylonia
like a storm flood, and Horus swept down the Nile, slaying the
followers of Set. As the divine sower of seed, Ninip may have
developed from Tammuz as Horus did from Osiris. Each were at once the
father and the son, different forms of the same deity at various
seasons of the year. The elder god was displaced by the son (spring),
and when the son grew old his son slew him in turn. As the planet
Saturn, Ninip was the ghost of the elder god, and as the son of Bel he
was the solar war god of spring, the great wild bull, the god of
fertility. He was also as Ber "lord of the wild boar", an animal
associated with Rimmon[316].
Nebo (Nabu), who was identified with Mercury, was a god of Borsippa.
He was a messenger and "announcer" of the gods, as the Egyptian Horus
in his connection with Jupiter was Her-ap-sheta, "Horus the opener of
that which is secret[317]". Nebo's original character is obscure. He
appears to have been a highly developed deity of a people well
advanced in civilization when he was exalted as the divine patron of
Borsippa. Although Hammurabi ignored him, he was subsequently invoked
with Merodach, and had probably much in common with Merodach. Indeed,
Merodach was also identified with the planet Mercury. Like the Greek
Hermes, Nebo was a messenger of the gods and an instructor of mankind.
Jastrow regards him as "a counterpart of Ea", and says: "Like Ea, he
is the embodiment and source of wisdom. The art of writing--and
therefore of all literature--is more particularly associated with him.
A common form of his name designates him as the 'god of the
stylus'."[318] He appears also to have been a developed form of
Tammuz, who was an incarnation of Ea. Professor Pinches shows that one
of his names, Mermer, was also a non-Semitic name of Ramman.[319]
Tammuz resembled Ramman in his character as a spring god of war. It
would seem that Merodach as Jupiter displaced at Babylon Nebo as
Saturn, the elder god, as Bel Enlil displaced the elder Ninip at
Nippur.
The god of Mars was Nergal, the patron deity of Cuthah,[320] who
descended into the Underworld and forced into submission Eresh-ki-gal
(Persephone), with whom he was afterwards associated. His "name", says
Professor Pinches, "is supposed to mean 'lord of the great
habitation', which would be a parallel to that of his spouse,
Eresh-ki-gal".[321] At Erech he symbolized the destroying influence of
the sun, and was accompanied by the demons of pestilence. Mars was a
planet of evil, plague, and death; its animal form was the wolf. In
Egypt it was called Herdesher, "the Red Horus", and in Greece it was
associated with Ares (the Roman Mars), the war god, who assumed his
boar form to slay Adonis (Tammuz).
Nergal was also a fire god like the Aryo-Indian Agni, who, as has been
shown, links with Tammuz as a demon slayer and a god of fertility. It
may be that Nergal was a specialized form of Tammuz, who, in a version
of the myth, was reputed to have entered the Underworld as a conqueror
when claimed by Eresh-ki-gal, and to have become, like Osiris, the
lord of the dead. If so, Nergal was at once the slayer and the slain.
The various Babylonian deities who were identified with the planets
had their characters sharply defined as members of an organized
pantheon. But before this development took place certain of the
prominent heavenly bodies, perhaps all the planets, were evidently
regarded as manifestations of one deity, the primeval Tammuz, who was
a form of Ea, or of the twin deities Ea and Anu. Tammuz may have been
the "sevenfold one" of the hymns. At a still earlier period the stars
were manifestations of the Power whom the jungle dwellers of Chota
Nagpur attempt to propitiate--the "world soul" of the cultured
Brahmans of the post-Vedic Indian Age. As much is suggested by the
resemblances which the conventionalized planetary deities bear to
Tammuz, whose attributes they symbolized, and by the Egyptian
conception that the sun, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were manifestations
of Horus. Tammuz and Horus may have been personifications of the Power
or World Soul vaguely recognized in the stage of Naturalism.
The influence of animistic modes of thought may be traced in the idea
that the planets and stars were the ghosts of gods who were superseded
by their sons. These sons were identical with their fathers; they
became, as in Egypt, "husbands of their mothers". This idea was
perpetuated in the Aryo-Indian _Laws of Manu_, in which it is set
forth that "the husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an
embryo and is born again of her[322]". The deities died every year,
but death was simply change. Yet they remained in the separate forms
they assumed in their progress round "the wide circle of necessity".
Horus was remembered as various planets--as the falcon, as the elder
sun god, and as the son of Osiris; and Tammuz was the spring sun, the
child, youth, warrior, the deity of fertility, and the lord of death
(Orion-Nergal), and, as has been suggested, all the planets.
The stars were also the ghosts of deities who died daily. When the sun
perished as an old man at evening, it rose in the heavens as Orion, or
went out and in among the stars as the shepherd of the flock, Jupiter,
the planet of Merodach in Babylonia, and Attis in Asia Minor. The
flock was the group of heavenly spirits invisible by day, the "host of
heaven"--manifestations or ghosts of the emissaries of the controlling
power or powers.
The planets presided over various months of the year. Sin (the moon)
was associated with the third month; it also controlled the calendar;
Ninip (Saturn) was associated with the fourth month, Ishtar (Venus)
with the sixth, Shamash (the sun) with the seventh, Merodach (Jupiter)
with the eighth, Nergal (Mars) with the ninth, and a messenger of the
gods, probably Nebo (Mercury), with the tenth.
Each month was also controlled by a zodiacal constellation. In the
Creation myth of Babylon it is stated that when Merodach engaged in
the work of setting the Universe in order he "set all the great gods
in their several stations", and "also created their images, the stars
of the Zodiac,[323] and fixed them all" (p. 147).
Our signs of the Zodiac are of Babylonian origin. They were passed on
to the Greeks by the Phoenicians and Hittites. "There was a time ",
says Professor Sayce, "when the Hittites were profoundly affected by
Babylonian civilization, religion, and art...." They "carried the
time-worn civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest
boundary of Egypt, and there handed them over to the West in the grey
dawn of European history.... Greek traditions affirmed that the rulers
of Mykenae had come from Lydia, bringing with them the civilization
and treasures of Asia Minor. The tradition has been confirmed by
modern research. While certain elements belonging to the prehistoric
culture of Greece, as revealed at Mykenae and elsewhere, were derived
from Egypt and Phoenicia, there are others which point to Asia Minor
as their source. And the culture of Asia Minor was Hittite."[324]
The early Babylonian astronomers did not know, of course, that the
earth revolved round the sun. They believed that the sun travelled
across the heavens flying like a bird or sailing like a boat.[325] In
studying its movements they observed that it always travelled from
west to east along a broad path, swinging from side to side of it in
the course of the year. This path is the Zodiac--the celestial "circle
of necessity". The middle line of the sun's path is the Ecliptic. The
Babylonian scientists divided the Ecliptic into twelve equal parts,
and grouped in each part the stars which formed their constellations;
these are also called "Signs of the Zodiac". Each month had thus its
sign or constellation.
The names borne at the present day by the signs of the Zodiac are
easily remembered even by children, who are encouraged to repeat the
following familiar lines:
The _Ram_, the _Bull_, the heavenly _Twins_,
And next the _Crab_, the _Lion_ shines.
The _Virgin_ and the _Scales_;
The _Scorpion, Archer_, and _Sea goat_,
The man that holds the _water pot_,
And _Fish_ with glitt'ring[326] tails.
The table on p. 308 shows that our signs are derived from ancient
Babylonia.
The celestial regions were also divided into three or more parts.
Three "fields" were allotted to the ancient triad formed by Ea, Anu,
and Bel. The zodiacal "path" ran through these "fields". Ea's field
was in the west, and was associated with Amurru, the land of the
Amorites; Anu's field was in the south, and was associated with Elam;
and Bel's central "field" was associated with the land of Akkad. When
the rulers of Akkad called themselves "kings of the four quarters",
the reference was to the countries associated with the three divine
fields and to Gutium[327](east = our north-east). Was Gutium
associated with demons, as in Scandinavia the north-east was
associated with the giants against whom Thor waged war?
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Date of Sun's Entry | |
|Constellations.|(Babylonian Month in | Babylonian Equivalent. |
| | brackets). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Aries (the |20th March (Nisan = |The Labourer or Messenger. |
|Ram). |March-April) | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Taurus (the |20th April (Iyyar = |A divine figure and the "bull |
|Bull). |April-May) |of heaven". |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Gemini (the |21st May (Sivan = |The Faithful Shepherd and Twins|
|Twins). |May-June). |side by side, or head to head |
| | |and feet to teet. |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Cancer (the |21st June (Tammuz = |Crab or Scorpion. |
|Crab). |June-July). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Leo (the Lion).|22nd July (Ab = |The big dog (Lion). |
| |July-August). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Virgo (the |23rd August (Elul = |Ishtar, the Virgin's ear of |
|Virgin). |August-Sept.). |corn. |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Libra (the |23rd September (Tisri|The Balance. |
|Balance). |= Sept.-Oct.). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Scorpio (the |23rd October | |
|Scorpion). |(Marcheswan = |Scorpion of darkness. |
| |Oct.-Nov.). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Sagittarius |22nd November |Man or man-horse with bow, or |
|(the Archer). |(Chisleu = |an arrow symbol. |
| |Nov.-Dec.). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Capricornus |21st December (Tebet |Ea's goat-fish. |
|(the Goat). |= Dec.-Jan.). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Aquarius (the |19th January (Sebat =|God with water urn. |
|Water Carrier).|Jan.-Feb.). | |
|---------------+---------------------+-------------------------------|
|Pisces (the |18th February (Adar =|Fish tails in canal. |
|Fishes). |Feb.-March). | |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
The Babylonian Creation myth states that Merodach, having fixed the
stars of the Zodiac, made three stars for each month (p. 147). Mr.
Robert Brown, jun., who has dealt as exhaustively with the
astronomical problems of Babylonia as the available data permitted
him, is of opinion that the leading stars of three constellations are
referred to, viz.: (1) the central or zodiacal constellations, (2) the
northern constellations, and (3) the southern constellations. We have
thus a scheme of thirty-six constellations. The "twelve zodiacal stars
were flanked on either side by twelve non-zodiacal stars". Mr. Brown
quotes Diodorus, who gave a résumé of Babylonian
astronomico-astrology, in this connection. He said that "the five
planets were called 'Interpreters'; and in subjection to these were
marshalled 'Thirty Stars', which were styled 'Divinities of the
Council'.... The chiefs of the Divinities are twelve in number, to
each of whom they assign a month and one of the twelve signs of the
Zodiac." Through these twelve signs sun, moon, and planets run their
courses. "And with the zodiacal circle they mark out twenty-four
stars, half of which they say are arranged in the north and half in
the south."[328] Mr. Brown shows that the thirty stars referred to
"constituted the original Euphratean Lunar Zodiac, the parent of the
seven ancient lunar zodiacs which have come down to us, namely, the
Persian, Sogdian, Khorasmian, Chinese, Indian, Arab, and Coptic
schemes".
The three constellations associated with each month had each a
symbolic significance: they reflected the characters of their months.
At the height of the rainy season, for instance, the month of Ramman,
the thunder god, was presided over by the zodiacal constellation of
the water urn, the northern constellation "Fish of the Canal", and the
southern "the Horse". In India the black horse was sacrificed at
rain-getting and fertility ceremonies. The months of growth,
pestilence, and scorching sun heat were in turn symbolized. The "Great
Bear" was the "chariot" = "Charles's Wain", and the "Milky Way" the
"river of the high cloud", the Celestial Euphrates, as in Egypt it was
the Celestial Nile.
Of special interest among the many problems presented by Babylonian
astronomical lore is the theory of Cosmic periods or Ages of the
Universe. In the Indian, Greek, and Irish mythologies there are four
Ages--the Silvern (white), Golden (yellow), the Bronze (red), and the
Iron (black). As has been already indicated, Mr. R. Brown, jun., shows
that "the Indian system of Yugas, or ages of the world, presents many
features which forcibly remind us of the Euphratean scheme". The
Babylonians had ten antediluvian kings, who were reputed to have
reigned for vast periods, the total of which amounted to 120 saroi, or
432,000 years. These figures at once recall the Indian Maha-yuga of
4,320,000 years = 432,000 x 10. Apparently the Babylonian and Indian
systems of calculation were of common origin. In both countries the
measurements of time and space were arrived at by utilizing the
numerals 10 and 6.
When primitive man began to count he adopted a method which comes
naturally to every schoolboy; he utilized his fingers. Twice five gave
him ten, and from ten he progressed to twenty, and then on to a
hundred and beyond. In making measurements his hands, arms, and feet
were at his service. We are still measuring by feet and yards
(standardized strides) in this country, while those who engage in the
immemorial art of knitting, and, in doing so, repeat designs found on
neolithic pottery, continue to measure in finger breadths, finger
lengths, and hand breadths as did the ancient folks who called an arm
length a cubit. Nor has the span been forgotten, especially by boys in
their games with marbles; the space from the end of the thumb to the
end of the little finger when the hand is extended must have been an
important measurement from the earliest times.
As he made progress in calculations, the primitive Babylonian appears
to have been struck by other details in his anatomy besides his sets
of five fingers and five toes. He observed, for instance, that his
fingers were divided into three parts and his thumb into two parts
only;[329] four fingers multiplied by three gave him twelve, and
multiplying 12 by 3 he reached 36. Apparently the figure 6 attracted
him. His body was divided into 6 parts--2 arms, 2 legs, the head, and
the trunk; his 2 ears, 2 eyes, and mouth, and nose also gave him 6.
The basal 6, multiplied by his 10 fingers, gave him 60, and 60 x 2
(for his 2 hands) gave him 120. In Babylonian arithmetic 6 and 60 are
important numbers, and it is not surprising to find that in the system
of numerals the signs for 1 and 10 combined represent 60.
In fixing the length of a mythical period his first great calculation
of 120 came naturally to the Babylonian, and when he undertook to
measure the Zodiac he equated time and space by fixing on 120 degrees.
His first zodiac was the Sumerian lunar zodiac, which contained thirty
moon chambers associated with the "Thirty Stars" of the tablets, and
referred to by Diodorus as "Divinities of the Council". The chiefs of
the Thirty numbered twelve. In this system the year began in the
winter solstice. Mr. Hewitt has shown that the chief annual festival
of the Indian Dravidians begins with the first full moon after the
winter festival, and Mr. Brown emphasizes the fact that the list of
Tamil (Dravidian) lunar and solar months are named like the Babylonian
constellations.[330] "Lunar chronology", wrote Professor Max Mailer,
"seems everywhere to have preceded solar chronology."[331] The later
Semitic Babylonian system had twelve solar chambers and the thirty-six
constellations.
Each degree was divided into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty
seconds. The hours of the day and night each numbered twelve.
Multiplying 6 by 10 (pur), the Babylonian arrived at 60 (soss); 60x10
gave him 600 (ner), and 600x6, 3600 (sar), while 3600x10 gave him
36,000, and 36,000x12, 432,000 years, or 120 saroi, which is equal to
the "sar" multiplied by the "soss"x2. "Pur" signifies "heap"--the ten
fingers closed after being counted; and "ner" signifies "foot". Mr.
George Bertin suggests that when 6x10 fingers gave 60 this number was
multiplied by the ten toes, with the result that 600 was afterwards
associated with the feet (ner). The Babylonian sign for 10 resembles
the impression of two feet with heels closed and toes apart. This
suggests a primitive record of the first round of finger counting.
In India this Babylonian system of calculation was developed during
the Brahmanical period. The four Yugas or Ages, representing the four
fingers used by the primitive mathematicians, totalled 12,000 divine
years, a period which was called a Maha-yuga; it equalled the
Babylonian 120 saroi, multiplied by 100. Ten times a hundred of these
periods gave a "Day of Brahma".
Each day of the gods, it was explained by the Brahmans, was a year to
mortals. Multiplied by 360 days, 12,000 divine years equalled
4,320,000 human years. This Maha-yuga, multiplied by 1000, gave the
"Day of Brahma" as 4,320,000,000 human years.
The shortest Indian Yuga is the Babylonian 120 saroi multiplied by
10=1200 divine years for the Kali Yuga; twice that number gives the
Dvapara Yuga of 2400 divine years; then the Treta Yuga is 2400 + 1200
= 3600 divine years, and Krita Yuga 3600 + 1200 = 4800 divine years.
The influence of Babylonia is apparent in these calculations. During
the Vedic period "Yuga" usually signified a "generation", and there
are no certain references to the four Ages as such. The names "Kali",
"Dvapara", "Treta", and "Krita" "occur as the designations of throws
of dice".[332] It was after the arrival of the "late comers", the
post-Vedic Aryans, that the Yuga system was developed in India.[333]
In _Indian Myth and Legend[334] it is shown that the Indian and Irish
Ages have the same colour sequence: (1) White or Silvern, (2) Red or
Bronze, (3) Yellow or Golden, and (4) Black or Iron. The Greek order
is: (1) Golden, (2) Silvern, (3) Bronze, and (4) Iron.
The Babylonians coloured the seven planets as follows: the moon,
silvern; the sun, golden; Mars, red; Saturn, black; Jupiter, orange;
Venus, yellow; and Mercury, blue.
As the ten antediluvian kings who reigned for 120 saroi had an astral
significance, their long reigns corresponding "with the distances
separating certain of the principal stars in or near the
ecliptic",[335] it seems highly probable that the planets were
similarly connected with mythical ages which were equated with the
"four quarters" of the celestial regions and the four regions of the
earth, which in Gaelic story are called "the four red divisions of the
world".
Three of the planets may have been heralds of change. Venus, as
"Dilbat", was the "Proclaimer", and both Jupiter and Mercury were
called "Face voices of light", and "Heroes of the rising sun" among
other names. Jupiter may have been the herald of the "Golden Age" as a
morning star. This planet was also associated with bronze, as "Kakkub
Urud", "the star of bronze", while Mars was "Kakkub Aban Kha-urud,"
"the star of the bronze fish stone". Mercury, the lapis lazuli planet,
may have been connected with the black Saturn, the ghost of the dead
sun, the demoniac elder god; in Egypt lapis lazuli was the hair colour
of Ra when he grew old, and Egyptologists translate it as black.[336]
The rare and regular appearances of Mercury may have suggested the
planet's connection with a recurring Age. Venus as an evening star
might be regarded as the herald of the lunar or silver age; she was
propitious as a bearded deity and interchanged with Merodach as a
seasonal herald.
Connecting Jupiter with the sun as a propitious planet, and with Mars
as a destroying planet, Venus with the moon, and Mercury with Saturn,
we have left four colour schemes which suggest the Golden, Silvern,
Bronze, and Iron Ages. The Greek order of mythical ages may have had a
solar significance, beginning as it does with the "golden" period. On
the other hand the Indian and Irish systems begin with the Silvern or
white lunar period. In India the White Age (Treta Yuga) was the age of
perfect men, and in Greece the Golden Age was the age of men who lived
like gods. Thus the first ages in both cases were "Perfect" Ages. The
Bronze Age of Greece was the age of notorious fighters and takers of
life; in Babylonia the bronze planet Mars was the symbol of the
destroying Nergal, god of war and pestilence, while Jupiter was also a
destroyer as Merodach, the slayer of Tiamat. In India the Black Age is
the age of wickedness. The Babylonian Saturn, as we have seen, is
black, and its god, Ninip, was the destroying boar, which recalls the
black boar of the Egyptian demon (or elder god) Set. The Greek Cronos
was a destroyer even of his own children. All the elder gods had
demoniac traits like the ghosts of human beings.
As the Babylonian lunar zodiac was imported into India before solar
worship and the solar zodiac were developed, so too may have been the
germs of the Yuga doctrine, which appears to have a long history.
Greece, on the other hand, came under the influence of Babylon at a
much later period. In Egypt Ra, the sun god, was an antediluvian king,
and he was followed by Osiris. Osiris was slain by Set, who was
depicted sometimes red and sometimes black. There was also a Horus
Age.
The Irish system of ages suggests an early cultural drift into Europe,
through Asia Minor, and along the uplands occupied by the
representatives of the Alpine or Armenoid peoples who have been traced
from Hindu Kush to Brittany. The culture of Gaul resembles that of
India in certain particulars; both the Gauls and the post-Vedic
Aryans, for instance, believed in the doctrine of Transmigration of
Souls, and practised "suttee". After the Roman occupation of Gaul,
Ireland appears to have been the refuge of Gaulish scholars, who
imported their beliefs and traditions and laid the foundations of that
brilliant culture which shed lustre on the Green Isle in late Pagan
and early Christian times.
The part played by the Mitanni people of Aryan speech in distributing
Asiatic culture throughout Europe may have been considerable, but we
know little or nothing regarding their movements and influence, nor
has sufficient evidence been forthcoming to connect them with the
cremating invaders of the Bronze Age, who penetrated as far as
northern Scotland and Scandinavia. On the other hand it is certain
that the Hittites adopted the planetary system of Babylonia and passed
it on to Europeans, including the Greeks. The five planets Ninip,
Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, and Nebo were called by the Greeks after
their gods Kronos, Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes, and by the
Romans Saturnus, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercurius. It must be
recognized, however, that these equations were somewhat arbitrary.
Ninip resembled Kronos and Saturnus as a father, but he was also at
the same time a son; he was the Egyptian Horus the elder and Horus the
younger in one. Merodach was similarly of complex character--a
combination of Ea, Anu, Enlil, and Tammuz, who acquired, when exalted
by the Amoritic Dynasty of Babylon, the attributes of the thunder god
Adad-Ramman in the form of Amurru, "lord of the mountains". During the
Hammurabi Age Amurru was significantly popular in personal names. It
is as Amurru-Ramman that Merodach bears comparison with Zeus. He also
links with Hercules. Too much must not be made, therefore, of the
Greek and Roman identifications of alien deities with their own.
Mulla, the Gaulish mule god, may have resembled Mars somewhat, but it
is a "far cry" from Mars-Mulla to Mars-Nergal, as it is also from the
Gaulish Moccus, the boar, called "Mercury", to Nebo, the god of
culture, who was the "Mercury" of the Tigro-Euphrates valley.
Similarly the differences between "Jupiter-Amon" of Egypt and
"Jupiter-Merodach" of Babylon were more pronounced than the
resemblances.
The basal idea in Babylonian astrology appears to be the recognition
of the astral bodies as spirits or fates, who exercised an influence
over the gods, the world, and mankind. These were worshipped in groups
when they were yet nameless. The group addressed, "Powerful, O
sevenfold, one are ye", may have been a constellation consisting of
seven stars.[337] The worship of stars and planets, which were
identified and named, "seems never to have spread", says Professor
Sayce, "beyond the learned classes, and to have remained to the last
an artificial system. The mass of the people worshipped the stars as a
whole, but it was only as a whole and not individually."[338] The
masses perpetuated ancient animistic beliefs, like the pre-Hellenic
inhabitants of Greece. "The Pelasgians, as I was informed at Dodona,"
wrote Herodotus, "formerly offered all things indiscriminately to the
gods. They distinguished them by no name or surname, for they were
hitherto unacquainted with either; but they called them gods, which by
its etymology means disposers, from observing the orderly disposition
and distribution of the various parts of the universe."[339] The
oldest deities are those which bore no individual names. They were
simply "Fates" or groups called "Sevenfold". The crude giant gods of
Scotland are "Fomhairean" (Fomorians), and do not have individual
names as in Ireland. Families and tribes were controlled by the Fates
or nameless gods, which might appear as beasts or birds, or be heard
knocking or screaming.
In the Babylonian astral hymns, the star spirits are associated with
the gods, and are revealers of the decrees of Fate. "Ye brilliant
stars... ye bright ones... to destroy evil did Anu create you.... At
thy command mankind was named (created)! Give thou the Word, and with
thee let the great gods stand! Give thou my judgment, make my
decision!"[340]
The Indian evidence shows that the constellations, and especially the
bright stars, were identified before the planets. Indeed, in Vedic
literature there is no certain reference to a single planet, although
constellations are named. It seems highly probable that before the
Babylonian gods were associated with the astral bodies, the belief
obtained that the stars exercised an influence over human lives. In
one of the Indian "Forest Books", for instance, reference is made to a
man who was "born under the Nakshatra Rohini ".[341] "Nakshatras" are
stars in the _Rigveda_ and later, and "lunar mansions" in Brahmanical
compositions.[342] "Rohini, 'ruddy', is the name of a conspicuously
reddish star, ɑ Tauri or Aldebaran, and denotes the group of the
Hyades."[343] This reference may be dated before 600 B.C., perhaps 800
B.C.
From Greece comes the evidence of Plutarch regarding the principles of
Babylonian astrology. "Respecting the planets, which they call _the
birth-ruling divinities_, the Chaldeans", he wrote, "lay down that two
(Venus and Jupiter) are propitious, and two (Mars and Saturn) malign,
and three (Sun, Moon, and Mercury) of a middle nature, and one
common." "That is," Mr. Brown comments, "an astrologer would say,
these three are propitious with the good, and may be malign with the
bad."[344]
Jastrow's views in this connection seem highly controversial. He holds
that Babylonian astrology dealt simply with national affairs, and had
no concern with "the conditions under which the individual was born";
it did not predict "the fate in store for him". He believes that the
Greeks transformed Babylonian astrology and infused it with the spirit
of individualism which is a characteristic of their religion, and that
they were the first to give astrology a personal significance.
Jastrow also perpetuates the idea that astronomy began with the
Greeks. "Several centuries before the days of Alexander the Great," he
says, "the Greeks had begun to cultivate the study of the heavens, not
for purposes of divination, but prompted by a scientific spirit as an
intellectual discipline that might help them to solve the mysteries of
the universe." It is possible, however, to overrate the "scientific
spirit" of the Greeks, who, like the Japanese in our own day, were
accomplished borrowers from other civilizations. That astronomy had
humble beginnings in Greece as elsewhere is highly probable. The late
Mr. Andrew Lang wrote in this connection: "The very oddest example of
the survival of the notion that the stars are men and women is found
in the _Pax_ of Aristophanes. Trygaeus in that comedy has just made an
expedition to heaven. A slave meets him, and asks him: 'Is not the
story true, then, that we become stars when we die?' The answer is,
'Certainly'; and Trygaeus points out the star into which Ion of Chios
has just been metamorphosed." Mr. Lang added: "Aristophanes is making
fun of some popular Greek superstition". The Eskimos, Persians,
Aryo-Indians, Germans, New Zealanders, and others had a similar
superstition.[345]
Jastrow goes on to say that the Greeks "imparted their scientific view
of the Universe to the East. They became the teachers of the East in
astronomy as in medicine and other sciences, and the credit of having
discovered the law of the precession of the equinoxes belongs to
Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer, who announced this important theory
about the year 130 B.C."[346] Undoubtedly the Greeks contributed to
the advancement of the science of astronomy, with which, as other
authorities believe, they became acquainted after it had become well
developed as a science by the Assyrians and Babylonians.
"In return for improved methods of astronomical calculation which,"
Jastrow says, "_it may be assumed_ (the italics are ours), contact
with Greek science gave to the Babylonian astronomers, the Greeks
accepted from the Babylonians the names of the constellations of the
ecliptic."[347] This is a grudging admission; they evidently accepted
more than the mere names.
Jastrow's hypothesis is certainly interesting, especially as he is an
Oriental linguist of high repute. But it is not generally accepted.
The sudden advance made by the Tigro-Euphratean astronomers when
Assyria was at the height of its glory, may have been due to the
discoveries made by great native scientists, the Newtons and the
Herschels of past ages, who had studied the data accumulated by
generations of astrologers, the earliest recorders of the movements of
the heavenly bodies. It is hard to believe that the Greeks made much
progress as scientists before they had identified the planets, and
become familiar with the Babylonian constellations through the medium
of the Hittites or the Phoenicians. What is known for certain is that
long centuries before the Greek science was heard of, there were
scientists in Babylonia. During the Sumerian period "the forms and
relations of geometry", says Professor Goodspeed, "were employed for
purposes of augury. The heavens were mapped out, and the courses of
the heavenly bodies traced to determine the bearing of their movements
upon human destinies."[348]
Several centuries before Hipparchus was born, the Assyrian kings had
in their palaces official astronomers who were able to foretell, with
varying degrees of accuracy, when eclipses would take place.
Instructions were sent to various observatories, in the king's name,
to send in reports of forthcoming eclipses. A translation of one of
these official documents sent from the observatory of Babylon to
Nineveh, has been published by Professor Harper. The following are
extracts from it: "As for the eclipse of the moon about which the king
my lord has written to me, a watch was kept for it in the cities of
Akkad, Borsippa, and Nippur. We observed it ourselves in the city of
Akkad.... And whereas the king my lord ordered me to observe also the
eclipse of the sun, I watched to see whether it took place or not, and
what passed before my eyes I now report to the king my lord. It was an
eclipse of the moon that took place.... It was total over Syria, and
the shadow fell on the land of the Amorites, the land of the Hittites,
and in part on the land of the Chaldees." Professor Sayce comments:
"We gather from this letter that there were no less than three
observatories in Northern Babylonia: one at Akkad, near Sippara; one
at Nippur, now Niffer; and one at Borsippa, within sight of Babylon.
As Borsippa possessed a university, it was natural that one of the
three observatories should be established there."[349]
It is evident that before the astronomers at Nineveh could foretell
eclipses, they had achieved considerable progress as scientists. The
data at their disposal probably covered nearly two thousand years. Mr.
Brown, junior, calculates that the signs of the Zodiac were fixed in
the year 2084 B.C.[350] These star groups do not now occupy the
positions in which they were observed by the early astronomers,
because the revolving earth is rocking like a top, with the result
that the pole does not always keep pointing at the same spot in the
heavens. Each year the meeting-place of the imaginary lines of the
ecliptic and equator is moving westward at the rate of about fifty
seconds. In time--ages hence--the pole will circle round to the point
it spun at when the constellations were named by the Babylonians. It
is by calculating the period occupied by this world-curve that the
date 2084 B.C. has been arrived at.
As a result of the world-rocking process, the present-day "signs of
the Zodiac" do not correspond with the constellations. In March, for
instance, when the sun crosses the equator it enters the sign of the
Ram (Aries), but does not reach the constellation till the 20th, as
the comparative table shows on p. 308.
When "the ecliptic was marked off into the twelve regions" and the
signs of the Zodiac were designated, "the year of three hundred
sixty-five and one-fourth days was known", says Goodspeed, "though the
common year was reckoned according to twelve months of thirty days
each[351], and equated with the solar year by intercalating a month at
the proper times.... The month was divided into weeks of seven
days.... The clepsydra and the sundial were Babylonian inventions for
measuring time."[352]
The sundial of Ahaz was probably of Babylonian design. When the shadow
went "ten degrees backward" (_2 Kings_, xx, II) ambassadors were sent
from Babylon "to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land" (_2
Chron._ xxxii, 31). It was believed that the king's illness was
connected with the incident. According to astronomical calculation
there was a partial eclipse of the sun which was visible at Jerusalem
on 11th January, 689 B.C, about 11.30 a.m. When the upper part of the
solar disc was obscured, the shadow on the dial was strangely
affected.
The Babylonian astrologers in their official documents were more
concerned regarding international omens than those which affected
individuals. They made observations not only of the stars, but also
the moon, which, as has been shown, was one of their planets, and took
note of the clouds and the wind likewise.
As portions of the heavens were assigned to various countries, so was
the moon divided into four quarters for the same purpose--the upper
part for the north, Gutium, the lower for the south, Akkad or
Babylonia, the eastern part for Elam, and the western for Amurru. The
crescent was also divided in like manner; looking southward the
astrologers assigned the right horn to the west and the left to the
east. In addition, certain days and certain months were connected with
the different regions. Lunar astrology was therefore of complicated
character. When the moon was dim at the particular phase which was
connected with Amurru, it was believed that the fortunes of that
region were in decline, and if it happened to shine brightly in the
Babylonian phase the time was considered auspicious to wage war in the
west. Great importance was attached to eclipses, which were
fortunately recorded, with the result that the ancient astronomers
were ultimately enabled to forecast them.
The destinies of the various states in the four quarters were
similarly influenced by the planets. When Venus, for instance, rose
brightly in the field of Anu, it was a "prosperor" for Elam; if it
were dim it foretold misfortune. Much importance was also attached to
the positions occupied by the constellations when the planets were
propitious or otherwise; no king would venture forth on an expedition
under a "yoke of inauspicious stars".
Biblical references to the stars make mention of well-known Babylonian
constellations:
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the
bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth (? the Zodiac) in
his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest
thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof
in the earth? _Job_, xxxviii, 31-33. Which maketh Arcturus, Orion,
and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south. _Job_, ix, 9. Seek
him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow
of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night.
_Amos_, v, 8.
The so-called science of astrology, which had origin in ancient
Babylonia and spread eastward and west, is not yet extinct, and has
its believers even in our own country at the present day, although
they are not nearly so numerous as when Shakespeare made Malvolio
read:
In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some
are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands....[353]
or when Byron wrote:
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires--'t is to be forgiven
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you....[354]
Our grave astronomers are no longer astrologers, but they still call
certain constellations by the names given them in Babylonia. Every
time we look at our watches we are reminded of the ancient
mathematicians who counted on their fingers and multiplied 10 by 6, to
give us minutes and seconds, and divided the day and the night into
twelve hours by multiplying six by the two leaden feet of Time. The
past lives in the present.