1908.] 



FOR PLANET IN BABYLONIAN. 143 



(damu, Br. No. 1503), and " rule " (belu, etc., Br. No. 1496; Meiss- 

 ner, No. 856), as manifestations of vitality and power as well as 

 "strong" (ikdii, Meissner, No. 851), "protect" (emOi, Meissner, 

 No. 853), etc. The idea of " removing " falls, therefore, in the cate- 

 gory of a secondary or tertiary derivative from the fundamental value 

 of the sign Bat. In the second place, it is rather a violent transition 

 from the sense of " removing " to that of " pasturing by itself " and 

 the like. Nor does the metaphor introduced in the Babylonian crea- 

 tion epic" (Tablet VII., iii, ed. King) where the stars, or rather 

 the gods, are compared to sheep under the guidance of Marduk 

 strengthen the conclusion that the planets are sheep that " pasture 

 aside " from the stars in general, since the passage does not refer 

 specifically to the planets. This passage, as well as the others ad- 

 duced by Kugler (/. c, p. 7), merely justifies the interpretation of 

 the first element in Lu-Bat as " sheep." For the second element we 

 must start from the much more common meaning attaching to the 

 sign in question, namely, "dead" {nutii). The Babylonians them- 

 selves had this equation in mind when they explained Lu-Bat as mus- 

 mit bu-lini, "causing cattle to die" (VR, 46, No. i, rev. 41) even 

 though this explanation is to be regarded as a fanciful one.^ 



Taking the two signs as they stand, the simplest explanation is 

 to interpret them as " dead sheep " in the sense of a sacrificial animal. 

 To the question which now arises, what connection is there between 

 tljie planets and " dead sheep," the divination texts, I venture to think, 

 furnish a satisfactory answer. 



II. 

 On the basis of recent researches,^ we must distinguish in Baby- 



' See Kugler, /. c, p. 7. 



* Recognized as fanciful by Jensen, Kosmologie, p. 96. Kugler's attempt 

 (/. c.) to reconcile this explanation with the interpretation offered in astro- 

 logical texts whereby certain phenomena connected with the planets prognos- 

 ticate death is very artificial and encounters a fatal objection from the con- 

 sideration that the prognostication of death in one form or other, is a com- 

 mon interpretation of omens, indeed one of the commonest. See examples in 

 Jastrow, "Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens," II,. pp. 261, 298, 328, 329, 331, 

 333, 343, etc. 



* See Jastrow, /. c, pp. 212 f ., and various papers by the writer as, e. g., 

 "Signs and Names of the Liver in Babylonian" (Zeitschrift fiir Assvr. XX., 

 p. Ill f.), "The Liver in Divination and the Beginnings of Anatomy" (Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin, January, 1908). 



