THE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION- FIGURES. 



59 



daily festivals, each class of festival having its 

 appropriate sacrifices and duties. 



This, I say, was the natural cause. Its adop- 

 tion may have been aided by the recognition 

 of the fact that the seven planets of the old sys- 

 tem of astronomy might conveniently be taken to 

 rule the days and the hours in the way described 

 in my essay on astrology. That that nomen- 

 clature and that system of association between 

 the planets and the hours, days, and weeks of 

 time measurement were eventually adopted, is cer- 

 tain ; but whether the convenience and apparent 

 mystical fitness of this arrangement led at all to 

 the use of weekly festivals in conjunction with 

 monthly ones, or whether those weekly festivals 

 were first adopted in the way described above, or 

 whether (which seems altogether more likely) 

 both sets of considerations led to the arrange- 

 ment, we cannot certainly tell. The arrangement 

 was in every way a natural one, and one may say, 

 considering all the circumstances, that it was al- 

 most an inevitable one. There was, however, an- 

 other possible arrangement, viz., the division of 

 time into ten daily periods, three to each month, 

 with corresponding new-moon festivals. But as 

 the arrival of the moon at the thirds of her prog- 

 ress are not at all so well marked as her arrival 

 at the quarters, and, as there is no connection be- 

 tween the number ten and the planets, this ar- 

 rangement was far less likely to be adopted than 

 the other. Accordingly, we find that only one or 

 two nations adopted it. Six sets of five days 

 would be practically the same arrangement ; five 

 sets of six for each month would scarcely be 

 thought of, as with that division the use of sim- 

 ple direct observations of the moon for time 

 measurement, which was the real aim of all such 

 divisions, would not be convenient or indeed even 

 possible for the generality of persons. Few could 

 tell easily when the moon is two-fifths or four- 

 fifths full, whereas every one can tell when she is 

 half full or quite full (the requisite for weekly 

 measurement) ; and it would be possible to guess 

 pretty nearly when she is one-third or two-thirds 

 full, the requisite for the tridecennial division. 



My object in the above discussion of the ori- 

 gin of the week (as distinguished from the origin 

 of the Sabbath, which I considered in my paper 

 on astrology), has been to show that the use of 

 the twelve zodiacal signs was in every case pre- 

 ceded by the use of the twenty-eight lunar man- 

 sions. It has been supposed that those nations 

 in whose astronomy the twenty-eight mansions 

 still appear adopted one system, while the use of 

 the twelve signs implies that another system had 



been adopted. Thus the following passage occurs 

 in Mr. Blake's version of Flammarion's " History 

 of the Heavens : " " The Chinese have twenty- 

 eight constellations, though the word sion does 

 not mean a group of stars, but simply a mansion 

 or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian 

 the word for constellation has the same meaning. 

 They also had twenty-eight, and the same num- 

 ber is found among the Arabians, Persians, and 

 Indians. Among the Chaldeans or Accadians we 

 find no sign of the number twenty-eight. The 

 ecliptic, or ' yoke of the sky,' with them, as we 

 see in the newly-discovered tablets, was divided 

 into twelve divisions, as now ; and the only con- 

 nection that can be imagined between this and 

 the twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who 

 thinks that the Chinese had originally only twen- 

 ty-four mansions, four more being added by Chen- 

 kung, 1100 b. c, and that they corresponded with 

 the twenty-four stars, twelve to the north and 

 twelve to the south, that marked the twelve signs 

 of the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under 

 this. supposition the twenty-eight has no reference 

 to the moon, whereas we have every reason to 

 believe it has " The last observation is undoubt- 

 edly correct — the twenty-eight mansions have 

 been mansions of the moon from the beginning. 

 But in this very circumstance, as also in the very 

 tablets referred to in the preceding passage, we 

 find all the evidence needed to show that origi- 

 nally the Chaldeans divided the zodiac into twenty- 

 eight parts. For we find from the tablets that, 

 like the other nations who had twenty-eight zodi- 

 acal mansions, the Chaldeans used a seven-day 

 period, derived from the moon's motions, every 

 seventh day being called sabbatu, and held as a 

 day of rest. We may safely infer that the Chal- 

 dean astronomers, advancing beyond those of 

 other nations, recognized the necessity of divid- 

 ing the zodiac with reference to the sun's mo- 

 tions instead of the moon's. They therefore dis- 

 carded the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and 

 adopted instead twelve solar signs ; this number 

 twelve, like the number twenty-eight itself, being 

 selected merely as the most convenient approxi- 

 mation to the number of parts into which tin 

 zodiac was naturally divided by another period. 

 Thus the twenty-eighth part of the zodiac corre- 

 sponds roughly with the moon's daily motion, 

 and the twelfth part of the zodiac corresponds 

 roughly with the moon's monthly motion ; and 

 both the numbers twenty-eight and twelve admit 

 of being subdivided, whereas twenty-nine (a near- 

 er approach than twenty-eight to the number of 

 days in a lunation) and thirteen (almost as near 



