NATURE 



[May 4. 1893 



would have been fidgeting and out of harmony with the 

 even tenor of the text, which is about as different 

 as it can possibly be from the productions of German 

 authors. 



I do not myself think it a good plan to incorporate 

 formulae in the text, so that there is nothing for the eye 

 to catch. Such a proceeding may be convenient to the 

 printer, but it is only permissible when the expressions 

 are very simple and easy ones. However, all those in this 

 book are simple and easy ones, so possibly no student need 

 feel any inconvenience. 



So far as I have observed, the statements made are 

 usually clear and correct. There are some few exceptions ; 

 for instance, the definition of self-induction on pp. 814, 

 815 is not satisfactory. On p. 858 the distance apart of 

 points,between which unit difference of magnetic potential 

 exists, is unnecessarily specified in the definition of 

 Verdet's constant ; but this is a slip made also in 

 Everett's " Units," and is an easy one both to make and 

 to correct. 



The account of a volume-air-thermometer given on 

 p. 295 can hardly pass muster ; and indeed this and 

 other meagre references to the work of Regnault may be 

 taken as typical of the absence of even the outlines of 

 those experimental details which one is accustomed to find 

 in the writings of French authors. 



But, as I said at the beginning, the attempt to 

 compress all physics into one volume of reasonable size 

 and good print can only be made if one is content to 

 omit about 90 per cent, of what might be included. As 

 a convenient summary of a course of lectures of a par- 

 ticular grade the book is probably about as good as can 

 be expected, and it may be found useful for revision- 

 work by students in this country. 



Oliver Lodge. 



BABYLONIAN COSMOLOGY. 

 Die Kosmologie der Babylonier. Studien und Materialen 

 von P. Jensen. (Strassburg.) 



THE thick volume of five hundred and fifty pages of 

 closely printed matter lying before us represents 

 what was originally intended by its author to be the first 

 part of an exhaustive treatise upon the mythology of the 

 Babylonians in the widest sense of the term, but he was 

 obliged to abandon the scheme after investigating the 

 spiritual and religious views of the Babylonians which 

 the cuneiform texts make known to us, because he was 

 driven by facts to admit that any such attempt would, 

 with our present information, be premature. Prof. Jensen 

 has then contented himself with placing in the hands of 

 his readers a series of facts and a collection of materials 

 for making researches into the astronomical system of 

 the Babylonians, together with the results which he 

 deduces from them. He is fain to admit that the present 

 state of the study of this subject is lamentable in the 

 extreme ; for those who have worked at it in times past, 

 and even those who still profess themselves to be devoted 

 to the science, link idea to idea without regard to natural 

 sequence, and draw conclusions, and invent systems, and 

 give themselves over to traditions rather than to the 

 serious discussion of the facts and statements 

 of the cuneiform texts. Other writers being naturally 

 NO. 1227, VOL. 48] 



incapable of distinguishing what is certain from that 

 which is not, and possessing neither the knowledge 

 necessary to control the work of Assyriologists, nor the 

 power to work independently, reproduce the statements 

 given doubtfully by scholars, and send them among non- 

 experts as incontrovertible facts, and thus it comes that 

 the greater part of the work which is current under the 

 name of " Babylonian Mythology " must be considered 

 base coin only. 



The earliest worker in the field of Babylonian 

 Astronomy was the famous Dr. Hincks, who published 

 the result of his investigations of some cuneiform texts- 

 in the British Museum in the Transactions of the Irish 

 Academy in 1856. In 1862 Sir Henry Rawlinson, the 

 " Father of Assyriology,'' discovered that most import, 

 ant document now universally known as the " Eponynv 

 Canon," in which an eclipse of the sun was mentioned. 

 As Dr. Hincks overlooked the fact that the greater num- 

 ber of the texts which he regarded as astronomical were 

 purely astrological, this discovery by Sir Henry Rawlin- 

 son of the notice of an astronomical event re- 

 corded by the Babylonians, the accuracy of which 

 could be demonstrated by modern mathematical 

 calculations, must be considered as the first step towards 

 a scientific'elucidation of Babylonian astronomy, and a 

 proof that pure astronomical science already existed in 

 the Euphrates Valley as early as B.C. 700. In 1871 the 

 veteran Assyriologist, Jules Oppert, published in the 

 Journal Asiatique the results of his study of some 

 syllabaries, and other texts in which the Babylonian names 

 of the planets and other stars were given, and three years 

 later Prof. Sayce published a lengthy paper entitled " The 

 Astronomy and the Astrology of the Babylonians,'' in the 

 Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, in 

 which he reprinted, without making a new collation, 

 most of the astrological texts published by Rawlinson in 

 " Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," vol. iii., to 

 which he added English translations. On the work of 

 these two last-mentioned Assyriologists Prof. Jensen 

 makes some strong comments. 



Passing over smaller works by Schrader and Lotz we 

 next strike firm ground in the e.xcellent work by Drs. 

 Epping and Strassmaier. The former is an astronomer 

 of no mean skill and ability, and the latter is one of the 

 greatest experts in modern cuneiform decipherment and 

 is thoroughly skilled in working at the tablets at first 

 hand. In the work entitled " Astronomisches aus Baby- 

 lon," Freiburg i. B. 1889, these scholars published the texts 

 from three tablets of lunar ephemerides for the years 

 188, 189, and 201 of the era of Seleucus, which began 

 B.C. 312, together with a long astronomical commentary 

 upon them and remarks upon Babylonian ephemerides of 

 planets in general. From these texts it was evident that 

 the Babylonians were accustomed to tabulate the heliacal 

 rising and setting of the planets and of Sirius, and the 

 opposition of the planets to the sun, and it was discovered 

 that they had in the ecliptic a number of groups of stars, 

 twelve of which correspond roughly in nomenclature and in 

 position with the signs of the Zodiac. When this im- 

 portant publication appeared Prof. Jensen had for some 

 years been mdependently working at the history of the 

 origin of the Zodiac, and a large portion of his work now 

 before us was already in type. A careful study of the 



