“The 15th day we observed the node of the moon, and the moon was eclipsed.”
Here is a more complicated observation:
“To the king, my Lord, may the Gods Nabu and Marduk be propitious, may the great gods grant to the king, my master, long life, the benefits of the flesh and satisfaction of the heart.
“The 27th day the moon disappeared; the 28th 29th and 30th day we continually observed the node of the obscuring sun. The eclipse did not take place. The 1st day (of the following month) we saw the moon during the first day of the month Tammuz (June) above the star Mercury of which I have previously sent an observation to the king my master. In its course during the day of Anu, around the shepherd star (the planet Venus), it was seen declining: on account of rain the horns were not very distinctly visible, and so it was in its whole course. The day Anu I sent the observation of its conjunction, to the king my master. It was prolonged and was visible above the star of the Chariot in its course during the day of Baal; it disappeared towards the star of the Chariot.
“To the King, my Lord, peace and happiness.”
The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally attributed to Hipparchus. It was he, indeed, who taught this fact to the Greeks, and he estimated its yearly amount as from 36 to 39 seconds; but it is certain that he learned about it in Chaldea, and that he obtained the elements of his calculations from the astronomical observations made on the lower Euphrates. All the astronomical knowledge of the Ninevite savants had the same point of origin.
Two thousand years before our era, from the time of a king of Agade called Sharrukin (Shargani-shar-ali), and who is usually known as Sargon I (the Ancient), the precession of the equinoxes was an observed and calculated fact, since it had already brought sufficient disturbance into the calendar to make a corrective element necessary. Sargon had given a brilliancy to his century which the learned men of Nineveh only echoed. In his time there was a library at Agade, the importance of which we can judge by the fragments which were preserved at Nineveh. We are certain that at these remote times the great divisions of the uranographic chart were already determined upon. Fixed stars were designated according to the different groups or constellations which were known by the names they have retained to this day.
Outside these fixed stars the signs of the zodiac were perfectly determined in that portion of the celestial vault which the texts designate by the name of harranu (the way), that is to say, the way of the stars. These stars were the planets. The Chaldeans knew of seven, and they were thus known to them: Shamash, the sun; Sin, the moon; Alap-Shamash, Saturn; Rus, Jupiter; Ashbat, Venus; Sulpa-sadu, Mars; Nivit-Anu, Mercury. The Ninevite savants borrowed their astronomical knowledge from the Chaldeans; they made use of the calendar as it was transmitted to them, and as such it has been used by all nations from the remotest times up to the present day.
The Assyrian year was composed of twelve lunar months. It began with the new moon preceding the vernal equinox. A well-known tablet thus fixes the day of the equinoxes: “At the sixth day of the month of Nisan (March) the days and nights are equal (and comprise), six kashbu for the day and six kashbu for the night. May Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the King, my Lord.”
To correct the error resulting from the difference between the lunar and solar year, a supplementary month was intercalated, the length of which necessarily varied with circumstances. The Ninevite tablets offer us calendars arranged in conformity with the different exigencies of life. Some are purely scientific, and show us the divisions of the year into days, months, and seasons. Others are formed to meet the needs of religion, and tell us, by the day, the feasts consecrated to divinities invoked or honoured by special ceremonies. Others seem to take current superstitions into account; thus days are marked by a particular sign, according as they are considered propitious or disastrous. We see tables constructed to indicate the influence of the stars on each day of the year, with a mention of appropriate prayers, to propitiate favourable auguries and ward off those which are fatal.
The importance of these last documents must not be exaggerated; they are related to superstitions common to all ages and lands; and, in the ancient East, as everywhere else, these beliefs merely represent one of the most curious, but the least interesting phases of the aberrations of the human mind.g
FOOTNOTES
[33] [This probably means that the father had been called to a high office.]
[34] [This is a letter from King Ammidatitana, the king who was third from the end of the first Babylonian dynasty. It is an example of the usual style of a royal letter.]
[35] For a description of these monuments and the history of their discovery, as well as for the conclusions which are to be drawn from them for the history of art in Mesopotamia, the reader is referred to De Sarsac’s album of reproductions [l’Art Chaldéen], also to L. Heerzey, Les fouilles de Chaldée in the Revue Archæologique, 1881, new series, vol. xlii, p. 56 ff. and 257.
[36] Here of course only architecture and sculpture in general are intended, without denying that the Semites, also those of Babylonia and Assyria have accomplished original things in single cases, in execution, and in certain genres, as, for example, in the reproduction of animal forms.
Babylonian King Lion Hunting
APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS
Such is the fate of empire: Asshur rose
Where elder thrones and prouder warriors stood;
Before the Memphian priest his precepts chose,
Men reasoned greatly of the highest good;
Before Troy was, or Xanthus rolled in blood,
Armies were ranged in battles’ dread array:
They fought—their glory withered in its bud;
They perished—with them ceased their tyrants’ sway;
New wars, new heroes came—their story passed away.—James Gates Percival.
It is a curious paradox that our knowledge of this oldest civilisation should be the very newest and most novel record with which present-day history has to deal. The Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, of whose accomplishments we speak so confidently to-day, lived out their national life, and vanished from the earth, as nations, mostly before civilisation had its dawning in Europe; and for two thousand years they were but a reminiscence.
It was reserved for nineteenth century investigators literally to dig from the earth their lost records, and to read the secrets of their forgotten history. Marvellous secrets they were, as we shall see; but before we turn to them, it will be of interest to recall the reminiscences that did service as the history of these wonderful peoples for so many centuries. In a few extracts we may set forth the substance of all that the world remembered of that marvellous civilisation from the days of Herodotus and Diodorus till the middle of the nineteenth century. A mixture of fact and fable, it still has absorbing interest, the more so that we may now compare it with the surer records brought to light in our own time. Aside from their intrinsic interest, the classical records have, in this regard, a unique importance.
As to the precise classical authorities in question, we have already become acquainted with Diodorus and Ælianus in the earlier portion of this work. Another author we shall now have occasion to quote is Berosus. As to this author and the exact status of his work, we cannot do better than quote the following critical estimate from the Babylone et la Chaldée of Joachim Menant.
“Berosus came of a priestly family and was born in Babylon, about 330 B.C. He himself is authority for the information that he was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. According to Tatian, he is the most learned of all Asiatic historians. He was deeply versed in the ancient traditions of his country and taught them to the Greeks, through whom they have come down to us. Vitruvius informs us that he left Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos, where he opened a school of astrology. He invented, or at least introduced among the Greeks, a particular kind of time-keeping. There still exist fragments of astrological works to which Berosus has attached his name, and owing to the special interests of the writers who have borrowed from his works, the fame of the astrologer perhaps outshines that of the historian. Pliny (VII. 37) declares that the Athenians erected a golden-tongued statue to him in the Gymnasium, on account of his wonderful predictions.