SUMERIAN TECHNOLOGY—BOBULA 667 
human knowledge, but it has been a slow transition and there is no 
sharp dividing line between earlier western Asian and later east 
European wisdoms. 
A closer look at the world of these very ancient Magi discloses that 
their “magic” was founded on the carefully collected and transmitted 
sum of observations made by the type of men whom today we would 
call scholars. Many generations of Magi observed the facts of 
weather, the march of the stars, the changes of the seasons, the 
phenomena connected with plants, animals, and human beings, and 
they combined these observations. 
The Magus was the man who had observed the fact, or received in 
secret teaching the important information, that when the sun’s disk 
ascends between the horns of the constellation Capricorn it means the 
end of winter. The force of the sun returns, the days are lengthen- 
ing, and he may preach to a depressed people the good news of the 
coming of the spring, the end of winter’s misery. 
Men and women able to predict the changes of weather, ever so 
important to primitive peoples, were the first scientists; their knowl- 
edge gave them power and raised them to the status of priest-princes. 
The source of this power remained for a long time the continued 
careful and ritual observations of the heavenly bodies and other 
natural phenomena that constitute astrology, the parent of modern 
astronomy. 
Sumerian healing art was far from being silly superstition. Before 
suggesting therapy, the Sumerian physicians had to recite conscien- 
tiously the diagnosis. Their prescriptions, concocted from plants, 
animals, and minerals, given with beer as a chaser, sound quite rational 
as witnessed by a tablet in the University of Pennsylvania Museum 
which has been called the oldest page in medical history. This Sumer- 
Ficure 43.—The seal of a physician, on gray limestone cylinder. 
