1T Ibid. 18 Nilsson, Primitive Time-Reckoning, p. 89.
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world that the year was composed of ten months. In a much earlier age, when the year was of an entirely different length, one revolution of the earth was also equal in time to ten revolutions of the moon. We shall trace this period in history in a succeeding volume of this work.
The Reforming of the Calendar
In the middle of the eighth century the calendar then in use became obsolete. From the year —
747 until the last of the catastrophes on the twenty-third of March, —687, the solar and lunar movements changed repeatedly, necessitating adjustments of the calendar. Reforms undertaken during this time soon became obsolete in their turn, and were replaced by new ones; only after the last catastrophe of —687, when the present world order was established, did the calendar become permanent.
Some of the clay tablets of Nineveh found in the royal library of that cityx contain astronomical observations made during the period before the present order in the planetary system was established. One tablet fixes the day of the vernal equinox as the sixth of Nisan: "On the sixth of the month Nisan, the day and night are equal." But another tablet places the equinox on the fifteenth of Nisan. "We cannot explain the difference," wrote a scholar.2 Judging by the accurate methods employed and the precision achieved in their observations, the stargazers of Nineveh would not have erred by nine days.
In the astronomical tablets of Nineveh "three systems of planets" are extensively represented; single planets are followed in all their movements in three different schedules. For the movements of the moon there are two different systems.3 Each of these systems is carried out down to the smallest detail, but only the last system of the planets and of the moon conforms to the present world order.
According to Tablet No. 93, the perihelion, or the point on the earth's orbit that is nearest the sun, is defined as the twentieth degree
1 The palace of Nineveh was the residence of Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal.
2 J. Menant, La Bibliotheque du palais de Ninive (1880), p. 100.
3 Kugler, Die babi/lonische Mondrechnung: Zwei Systeme der Chaldaer iiber den Lauf des Mov.dcs und der Sonne, pp. 207-209.
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of the sign of the zodiac called the Archer; at aphelion, when the earth is farthest from the sun, the sun is said to be at the twentieth degree of Gemini. Accordingly, these points are designated as stations of the fastest and slowest solar motion. "But the real position of the apsides decidedly robin-bobin
contradicts these statements." 4 Another tablet, No. 272, seventy years younger than the first, gives very different data for the perihelion and aphelion, and scholars wonder at this.
All the numerous data on solar movements in one of the systems lead to one and the same conclusion. "The solstitial and equinoctial points of the ecliptic lay 6° too far to the east." 5
"The distances traveled by the moon on the Chaldean ecliptic from one new moon to the next are, according to Tablet No. 272, on the average 3° 14' too great." 6 This means that during a lunar month the moon moved a greater distance in relation to the fixed stars than present observation shows.
In Tablet No. 32, the movement of the sun along the zodiac is precisely calculated in degrees, and the station of the sun at the beginning of each lunar month is determined exactly; but it is "a perplexing presentation of the ununiform movement of the sun. The question is insistent: Why is it that the Babylonians formulated the nonuniformity of the solar movement precisely in this way?" 7
As the various systems recorded in the astronomical tablets of Nineveh show, the world order changed repeatedly in the course of a single century. Hence, the Chaldean astronomers had the task of repeatedly readjusting the calendar. "From certain passages in the astrological tablets it is easy to see that the calculation of times and seasons was one of the chief duties of the astrologers in Mesopotamia." 8 The scholars ask: How could those men, employed for that very purpose, have made the egregious mistakes recorded in the tablets, and carried these mistakes over into systems in which the movements of the sun, the moon, and the five planets were recorded with repetitions at regular intervals, these movements and intervals being consistently different from those of the present celestial order?
* Ihid., p. 90. B Ibid., p. 72. « Ibid., p. 90. » Ibid., p. 67
8 R. C. Thompson, The Reports of the Magicians and Astrohgers of Nineveh and Babylon, II, xviii.
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How could the stargazers who composed the earlier tablets be so careless as to maintain that the year is 360 days long, a mistake that in six years accumulates to a full month of divergence; or how could the astronomers of the royal observatories announce to the king the movements of the moon and its phases on wrong dates, though a child can tell when the moon is new,9 and then record all this in very scholarly tablets requiring advanced mathematical knowledge?10 Hence scholars speak of "enigmatic mistakes." n
However, it appears to us that the tablets with their changing astronomical systems reflect the changing order of the world and consequent attempts to adjust the calendar to the changes.
When the cataclysm of the 23rd of March, —687 brought about another disturbance in the length of the year and the month, the new standards remained uncertain until they could be calculated anew in a series of investigations.
From the time of that catastrophe until about the year —669 or —667, no New Year festivals were observed at Babylon.12 "Eight years under Sennacherib, twelve years under Esarhaddon: for twenty years . . . the New Year's festival was omitted," says an ancient chronicle on a clay tablet.13 According to cuneiform inscriptions, in the days of Sargon II a new world age began, and in the days of his son Sennacherib another world age.14 In the days of Assurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, the planetary movements, the precession of the equinoxes, and the periodic returns of the eclipses were recalculated, and these new tablets, together with the older ones or copies of the older ones, were stored in the palace library at Nineveh.
9 "The class of magicians who calculated the length of the months and published information concerning them formed a very important section of the Babylonian and Assyrian priesthood."
Ibid., p. xxiii.
10 C. Bezold, "Astronomie, Himmelschau und Astrallehre bei den Babyloniern," in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, philos.-histor. Klasse, 1911, expresses the opinion that before the sixth century the Babylonians were unaware of the relative robin-bobin
lengths of the solar year and 12 lunar months. See also Gundel, Dekane und Dekansternbilder, p.
379.
11 Kugler, Die Mondrechnung, p. 90.
12 S. Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts, p. 22. 13 Ibid., p. 25.
14 A. Jeremias, Der alte Orient und die agyptische Religion (1907), p. 17; Winckler, Forschungen, III, 300.
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351
The tablets from Nineveh provide the best possible opportunity to learn how the order of the world changed in the eighth and seventh centuries.
Repeated changes in the course of the sun across the firmament led the astronomers of Babylonia to distinguish three paths of the sun: the Anu path, the Enlil path, and the Ea path. These three paths created much difficulty for the writers on Babylonian astronomy, and many explanations were offered and as many rejected.15 The Anu, Enlil, and Ea paths of the planets across the sky appear to denote the successive ecliptics in various world ages. Like the sun, the planets in different times moved along the Anu, Enlil, and Ea paths.
In the Talmudie a number of scattered passages deal with a calendric change made by Hezekiah.