ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTniK 



trosjIliMsnninstn speak nf ims 



rruK the Utter term for contingencies not depending on life, w 



-inim HTM, mstirH fit inrrtrnmtti 



at . Ac. [ImuRAKCB, AmrumM, Ac.] 

 AKCHITKCTURE. The architecture of Assyria, 

 including that of Ifobylon, will be treated of under NIXKVKH, Aiu-in- 

 TfxrruM or. 



ASTAKTE, Achtoret or AjihUroth, sometimes called Syria Dm, the 

 Syrian Goddess, one of the deities of Phoenicia, of whoee attribute* 

 and character we are unable to giro a detailed account from the 

 tcantinrm ' toe information transmitted respecting her; but who is 

 generally regarded an corrwponding with the AI-HROIHTK <>i the 

 Greeks, The author of the treatise ' De Dea Syria,' usually ascribed to 

 Lucian, says, that Astarte b the Mine u the Greek Selene (moon) : l>ut 

 Cicero ('Nat Deor.' iii. 23) considers her as the fourth Venus, the 

 wife of Adonb ; and if ao Lucian Rays ahe had temples at Byblb and 

 Lolanus, but he distinguishes her from Astarte. The Romans intro- 

 duced her as Astarte, making her sometimes the same an Juno, and 

 at others aa Diana or Venus. A Roman altar was discovered in 1749, 

 at Oorbridge in Northumberland, with a Greek inscription, stating that 

 It was dedicated by Pulcher to Astarte ; two engravingB of it were 

 given in the Archajologia,' vol. ii. pi. 4, vol. iii. pi. 17. Herodian 

 (r. 15) tells us that the Africans call her Urania, which, however, b a 

 Greek name, and the Phoenicians, Astroarche (queen of stan). By 

 others ahe b thought to be the Here (Juno) of the Greeks, but wo 

 think the opinion of Cicero b most consistent with the few facts we 

 know respecting her, and that ahe was nothing else than the planet 

 Venus, whom the Phoenicians worshipped as Astarte. She is fre- 

 quently mentioned in the Huly Scriptures in connection with Baal, aa 

 educing the Israelites from their duty. (Judges, U. 13 ; 1 Sam. vii. 

 3, 4, xii 10 where she b called Ashtaroth in the authorised translation.) 

 Astarte had a magnificent temple at Sidon, where she seems to have 

 been the principal divinity. Solomon b said (1 Kings, xi. 5) to have 

 " gone after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians." In Judges, 

 iii 7, Israel b said to have "served Baalim and the groves," and 

 Ashtaroth b supposed to have been the idol of the groves. John 

 amys that whenever the worship of, or in, groves b mentioned in the 

 Old Testament, the moon or Ashtaroth b meant, and hence the order 

 to cut down the groves in Exod. xzxiv. 13, and Deut. vii 8. Some 

 mythologbta speak of Hierapolb in Syria as the central point of her 

 worship, but they have confounded her with Derceto, who was the 

 Dagon of the Philistines. The blond of Cyprus received her religious 

 rites from Phoenicia, and this divinity became known there as 

 Aphrodite. The rose and the lotus were sacred to her, and, among 

 animals, the lion, the horse, the boar, the loonier, and the pigeon. 

 The temple of Venus at Ascalon, mentioned by Herodotus (1. 105), 

 was, there can be little doubt, a temple of Ashtaroth ; in 1 Sam. xxxi. 

 10, Saul's armour b stated to have been placed by the Philistines in 

 the house of Ashtaroth. 



(Seldcn, Zk Diit Syria, 244 ; Hock, Crtta, Gottingen, 1823 ; Hunter, 

 Der Ttmpd <fcr IfiiMnlitche* GSttinn m Paphot, Kopenhag, 1824.) 



ASTERISK, a. coUedim ofitart, formerly used for cmuttllation, but 

 now appropriated to signify any small cluster, which it b either 

 desirable to distinguish from the rest of the constellation in which it 

 lies, or which b not a part of any particular constellation. 



ASTEROIDS. This term b usually applied to the group of small 

 planets revolving between Mars and Jupiter, which have been discovered 

 during the course of the present century, and more especially within 

 the last few years. Any person who attentively considers the relative 

 magnitudes of the orbits of the older planets, will have no difficulty in 

 perceiving that there exist* a comparatively wider gap between the 

 orbits of Mars and Jupiter than in the case of any other two con- 

 secutive planets. Kepler, who did not fail to remark thin anomalous 

 fact, found that it offered an insurmountable obstacle to the success of 

 hb researches, while engaged, during! t e early period of his career, 

 in attempting to connect together the mean distances of the planets 

 from the sun by some general law. He finally hazarded the bold con- 

 jecture that a planet really existed between the orbits of Mars and 

 Jupiter, and that the circumstance of its not being visible was due t<: 

 its extreme "P*!)"*** This idea of Kepler's was supported by many 

 eminent German philosophers and astronomers of the last century, 

 including Kant and Lambert, and it acquired an accession of plausi- 

 bility from the discovery of an empiric formula, usually known as 

 Bode's law of the planetary distances, but which b, in reality, due not 

 to Bode, but to Titius of Wttrtemberg. Supposing the mean distance 

 nf the earth from the sun to be represented by unity, this formula 

 lsds to the following numerical results with respect to the mean 

 distances of the planets from the same body. We exclude from this 

 li*t the planets Uranus and Neptune, which had not been discovered 

 at the time to which our remarks refer. 



>'mr of Planet. 

 Mercury 







The Earth . 

 Hi . . 



Hypothetic j'l 

 Jupiter 

 Saturn . 



4+u 

 4 + 3 

 4+6 

 4 + 12 

 4 + 24 

 4 + 48 



Mean DtiUncc from 

 the Sun. 



- A 



= 7 



= 10 



= M 



= 28 



= 



= 100 



The law of then numbers is obvious. Now, if we express in terms 

 of the same unit the real mean distances of the planeU which were 

 mown to exist, wo obtain the following result* : 



Meaa DUtanrc from 

 the Sun. 



. 3-87 



. . 



. HVtiO 



. . 



. * 



. . .VJ-03 



Nats* of Planet. 



Mercury .... 



Venus 



The Earth .... 

 Ban 



Jupiter 



Saturn 



A comparison of the two foregoing tables serves to exhibit the close 

 agreement which presented itself between the actual and hy]>t 

 distances of the planets. It also plainly indicates the necessity u Inch 

 existed for the discovery of an additional planet between Mai 

 Jupiter, in order that the system of planetary distances should acquire 

 the character of a complete expression of Bode's law. 



The discovery of Uranus in 1781, served still further to increase the 

 probability of the existence of such a planet. .A 

 the mean distance (see the first of the two foregoing tables) of the 

 next planet beyond Saturn would be 4 + 192 = 196. The real distance 

 was found to be 191-83. 



At length the period arrived which was to be signalised by the dis- 

 covery of the long suspected planet. On the night of January 1 , INI!. 

 Piazn, the celebrated Italian astronomer, in the course of his 1 

 at the Palermo Observatory, determined the position of a small star 

 in the constellation Taurus, which he found, a few days afterwards, to 

 have a retrograde motion in the zodiac. Hb impression woo that the 

 moveable body was in reality a comet, although it exhibited none of 

 the usual features of such bodies, and for some time after its di.- 

 he refrained from communicating to astronomers its apparent p. 

 in all probability with the view of being himself enabled in the first 

 instance to deduce from them the elements of its orbit. 1 1 

 to observe the strange body from night to night down to the llth of 

 February, when his further labours were interrupted by an illness. 

 In the meantime he hod transmitted to Oriani, Bode, and Lalamlc, 

 some results of hb observations, but before they reached either f 

 those astronomers it was found that the moveable body had approached 

 too near the sun to admit of obtaining any further determinations of 

 its position. It plainly appeared, however, from a discussion of Piazzi's 

 observations, that the object discovered was in reality a planet i 

 ing in the region between Mars and Jupiter, in accordance with l!,lc's 

 law. ( iaussv who had just entered on his brilliant career as a theorct ieal 

 astronomer, having obtained possession of Piazzi's observations, 

 mined the elliptic elements of the planet's orbit by a method of his 

 own invention, and calculated an ephemerb of its motion, for the 

 purpose of aiding in its re-discovery. In the month of September the 

 planet, according to Gauss's calculations, had sufficiently emerged from 

 the rays of the sun to hold out a hope of its detection ; and an 

 search for it was forthwith instituted at various observatories through- 

 out Europe. Thb was a much more troublesome operation than a 

 similar search would be in the present day, when so many e*> 

 charts are available to the observer. On the 7th of December, \"ii 

 Zoch, who then held the appointment of Director of the Obsei - 

 at Seeberg, obtained a trace of the planet, but a continuance of 

 weather prevented him from verifying his observation until the 31st of 

 the same month, when he obtained a complete assurance of his 

 re-dboovery of the body. Olbers, the celebrated astronomer also 

 re-discovered it, independently, on the following evening at Hi 

 Piazzi, the discoverer upon whom devolved the right of naming the 

 planet, bestowed on it the appellation of Ceres Ferdinandca, but the 

 latter epithet, proposed by him as a compliment to hb soverei^ 

 patron, speedily fell into disuse, and the appropriate name of Ceres, 

 in allusion to the titular deity of Sicily, was alone ret 



Pallas, the second of the group of minor planets, was discovered by 

 Olbers, on the 28th of March, 1802. Its orbit was calculated by Gauss, 

 who found its mean distance from the sun to be 2'670, agree! n;- 

 nearly with the mean distance of Ceres. The inclination of its m-liit 

 to the ecliptic was, however, still greater than in the coses of tl 

 mentioned planet, amounting to so much as 34 49'. It was also 

 remarkable for the great eccentricity of its orbit, which was equal to 

 0'24"64, exceeding in this respect any of the |>lanets hitherto disc . 



From the circumstance of t\vo planets of very small magnitude 

 having been discovered with nearly equal mean distances from the mm, 

 and with inclinations greatly exceeding those of the older planets, 

 Olbcrs was led to entertain the curious notion that the two llies. 

 might be in reality fragments of some larger planet which had suffered 

 an explosion from some internal convulsion, and he suggested that 

 many more of such fragim-nt - mi::ht K- found revolving in the same 

 region. He remarked further that, if this hypothesb were true, the 

 orbits of the various fragments might obviously have very .1 

 inclinations with respect to each other and to the ecliptic, but that 

 they would all have two common points of intersection in o] 

 regions of the- heavens. These two points were found, in the case of 

 the two newly -discovered planets, to bo situate in the constellations of 

 Virgo and tho Whale. Ho accordingly proposed, with a view to tin; 



