igoS.] IN BABYLONIA 'AND ASSYRIA. 657 



thus remain for Xinib the planet Saturn whose large size would 

 have been regarded as appropriate for a solar deity once occupying 

 the position that afterwards was assumed by !Marduk. 



The planets thus representing the great gods of the pantheon, 

 the prominent fixed stars were associated with the minor deities and 

 while in the case of many of the stars occurring in the purely as- 

 tronomical texts which belong to the later and latest periods of 

 Babylonian culture, ^"^ no definite association with specific deities was 

 worked out, yet it is to be borne in mind that all the stars were 

 regarded as gods in a logical and consistent extension of the prin- 

 ciple which gave rise to astrology as a system of divination. It is 

 one of the many merits of Hugo Winckler-' to have demonstrated 

 as one of the tenets of the Babylonian-Assyrian conception of the 

 universe a perfect correspondence between occurrences on earth and 

 phenomena in heaven.-'^ Earth and heaven stand related to each 

 other as a reflection in a mirror to the original which is reflected. 

 Since all that happens is due to the gods, it follows from the specu- 

 lative view which places the gods in the heavens that occurrences on 

 earth are prepared in the heavens. What one sees in the heavens is 

 therefore the activity of the gods preparing the events on earth. 

 The constantly changing aspect of the starry universe thus finds a 

 natural explanation. The movements of sun, moon and planets as 

 well as the ever-varying aspects of clouds and all other phenomena 

 of a striking character were the external symptoms of the never- 



^ See Kugler, " Sternkunde," p. 2 and elsewhere whose views have been 

 accepted by Boll, Eduard Meyer, Schmidt and many others. See Jastrow, 

 II., p. 432, note I, where I have set forth my own position on the important 

 question as to the age of astronomy in Babylonia and Assyria with an en- 

 deavor to do justice to both sides of the burning problem. 



'' " Himmels und Weltenbild der Babylonier " (Leipzig, 1893, 2*'' Auflage) 

 and numerous other monographs of this scholar. See Jastrow, 0. c, II., p. 

 418, note 2. 



"" The same view prevails among the Indians of IMexico according to 

 Preuss " Die Astralreligion in Mexico in vorspanischer Zeit und in der 

 Gegenwart" (Transactions of the 3d International Congress for the History 

 of Religions I., p. 36 seq.). It is to be noted that also among the IMexican 

 Indians the astral cult included the worship of storm and rain deities (/. c. 

 p. 38 seq.). Preuss is mistaken, however, in regarding this astral religion as 

 " primitive." On the contrary, it betrays all the earmarks of a cult devised 

 by priests on the basis of elaborate cosmical speculations. 



