History of Astronomy | Page 6

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. Pingr�� 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 his system, in which the earth revolves in an orbit, from fantastic first principles, of which the following are examples: "The circular motion is the most perfect motion," "Fire is more worthy than earth," "Ten is the perfect number." He wrote nothing, but is supposed to have said that the earth, moon, five planets, and fixed stars all revolve round the sun, which itself revolves round an imaginary central fire called the Antichthon. Copernicus in the sixteenth century claimed Pythagoras as the founder of the system which he, Copernicus, revived.
Anaxagoras (born 499 B.C.) studied astronomy in