672 JASTROW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4, 



Occident, but that would not preclude the possibility of influences 

 from the side of Greece at a later stage in the development of astro- 

 nomical lore. 



To account for the point of departure for the unfolding of a 

 genuine science as astronomy, independent of merely empirical ob- 

 servations in the interest of astrology, and which as we saw*'^ dates 

 from the sixth century B. C, we have another factor entering into 

 Babylonia about this time that must have exerted a profound in- 

 fluence — the appearance of Persia on the scene and with it the 

 advanced form of faith known as Zoroastrianism and which by com- 

 parison with the emphatically polytheistic conceptions of the Baby- 

 lonian religion was superlatively rationalistic. Contact with a 

 strange culture is always attended by an intellectual stimulus, and 

 this takes place whether the contest be friendly or hostile. Though 

 the Persian rulers even after Darius with whom the full sway 

 of Zoroastrianism may be said to begin, maintained a conciliatory 

 attitude towards the gods of Babylonia, Cyrus going so far as to 

 claim that his conquest of the country was in the interest of Mar- 

 duk,''" nevertheless, the presence of a totally dififerent religion, recog- 

 nized as the official one by the Persian rulers from the days of 

 Darius on, must have acted as a disintegrating element that led to a 

 decline in the belief in the Bab3donian gods and to a corresponding 

 weakening of the hold that the official rites had on the people. I ven- 

 ture to think that the influence of Zoroastrianism, bringing in its 

 wake — as did Christianity and as did Islamism — a wave of intellec- 

 tual advance, is the factor which accounts for the definite separation 

 of the study of the heavenly phenomena from being merely an ad- 

 junct to a system of divination, to take its position as a genuine and 

 independent science. A further impetus to the new science was given 

 by the contact with Greek culture with the further possibility of a 

 direct influence of Greek astronomical theories and methods on the 

 investigations of the Babylonian priests. 



The advance of astronomy must, however, have reacted also 

 on the basic principle which we have seen underlay Babylonian- 

 Assyrian astrology. Though even the barn-pnests, while still com- 



"° See above, p. 667. 



'"' Hagen, Cyrus-Texte in " Beitriige zur Assyriologie," II., p. 229. 



