History of Astronomy | Page 6

Babylonians, held the same
station and dignity in the State as did the priests in Egypt, and spent all
their time in the study of philosophy and astronomy, and the arts of
divination and astrology. They held that the world of which we have a
conception is an eternal world without any beginning or ending, in
which all things are ordered by rules supported by a divine providence,
and that the heavenly bodies do not move by chance, nor by their own
will, but by the determinate will and appointment of the gods. They
recorded these movements, but mainly in the hope of tracing the will of
the gods in mundane affairs. Ptolemy (about 130 A.D.) made use of
Babylonian eclipses in the eighth century B.C. for improving his solar
and lunar tables.
Fragments of a library at Agade have been preserved at Nineveh, from
which we learn that the star-charts were even then divided into
constellations, which were known by the names which they bear to this
day, and that the signs of the zodiac were used for determining the
courses of the sun, moon, and of the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn.
We have records of observations carried on under Asshurbanapal, who
sent astronomers to different parts to study celestial phenomena. Here
is one:--
To the Director of Observations,--My Lord, his humble servant
Nabushum-iddin, Great Astronomer of Nineveh, writes thus: "May
Nabu and Marduk be propitious to the Director of these Observations,
my Lord. The fifteenth day we observed the Node of the moon, and the
moon was eclipsed."
The Phoenicians are supposed to have used the stars for navigation, but
there are no records. The Egyptian priests tried to keep such

astronomical knowledge as they possessed to themselves. It is probable
that they had arbitrary rules for predicting eclipses. All that was known
to the Greeks about Egyptian science is to be found in the writings of
Diodorus Siculus. But confirmatory and more authentic facts have been
derived from late explorations. Thus we learn from E. B. Knobel[2]
about the Jewish calendar dates, on records of land sales in Aramaic
papyri at Assuan, translated by Professor A. H. Sayce and A. E.
Cowley, (1) that the lunar cycle of nineteen years was used by the Jews
in the fifth century B.C. [the present reformed Jewish calendar dating
from the fourth century A.D.], a date a "little more than a century after
the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those whose business is
recorded had fled into Egypt with Jeremiah" (Sayce); and (2) that the
order of intercalation at that time was not dissimilar to that in use at the
present day.
Then again, Knobel reminds us of "the most interesting discovery a few
years ago by Father Strassmeier of a Babylonian tablet recording a
partial lunar eclipse at Babylon in the seventh year of Cambyses, on the
fourteenth day of the Jewish month Tammuz." Ptolemy, in the
Almagest (Suntaxis), says it occurred in the seventh year of Cambyses,
on the night of the seventeenth and eighteenth of the Egyptian month
Phamenoth. Pingré and Oppolzer fix the date July 16th, 533 B.C. Thus
are the relations of the chronologies of Jews and Egyptians established
by these explorations.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These ancient dates are uncertain.
[2] _R. A. S. Monthly Notices_, vol. lxviii., No. 5, March, 1908.

3. ANCIENT GREEK ASTRONOMY.
We have our information about the earliest Greek astronomy from
Herodotus (born 480 B.C.). He put the traditions into writing. Thales
(639-546 B.C.) is said to have predicted an eclipse, which caused much

alarm, and ended the battle between the Medes and Lydians. Airy fixed
the date May 28th, 585 B.C. But other modern astronomers give
different dates. Thales went to Egypt to study science, and learnt from
its priests the length of the year (which was kept a profound secret!),
and the signs of the zodiac, and the positions of the solstices. He held
that the sun, moon, and stars are not mere spots on the heavenly vault,
but solids; that the moon derives her light from the sun, and that this
fact explains her phases; that an eclipse of the moon happens when the
earth cuts off the sun's light from her. He supposed the earth to be flat,
and to float upon water. He determined the ratio of the sun's diameter to
its orbit, and apparently made out the diameter correctly as half a
degree. He left nothing in writing.
His successors, Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) and Anaximenes
(550-475 B.C.), held absurd notions about the sun, moon, and stars,
while Heraclitus (540-500 B.C.) supposed that the stars were lighted
each night like lamps, and the sun each morning. Parmenides supposed
the earth to be a sphere.
Pythagoras (569-470 B.C.) visited Egypt to study science. He deduced