150 



♦ KNO\A^LEDGE ♦ 



[May 2, 1887. 



Welsh ponies of equal age and equal market value, take 

 one down a coal pit to work in the ordinary manner for six 

 months, and let the other work above ground for the same 

 period. At the end of the time the pit pony will sell for 20 

 per cent, more than the other in any horse fair. The fine 

 condition of the coat of pit horses is proverbial. It is partly 

 due, no doubt, to the climate, which is always temperate, 

 with a variation of only a few degrees. Such a climate is 

 especially favourable to horses. 



ANCIENT SOLAR FESTIVALS.* 



By W. St. Chad Boscawen. 



;MON(} a star-gazing people like the ancient 

 Chaldeans, the equinoxes became early ob- 

 served, and of this testimony is furnished 

 liy inscriptions recording the dates of the 

 equinoxes. These inscriptions come from 

 the royal college library of Nineveh, and 

 form part of the great collection of astro- 

 nomical and astrological documents found there. In these 

 documents, of which I quote the following example, the 

 natural phenomena of the equinox are observed (W. A. I., 

 iii. .51. 1) : — " The sixth day of the month Nisan, the day 

 and the night balanced. There were six kaspii of day, six 

 kasjm of night." This report shows how from the temple ob- 

 servatories of Assyria in the reign of Assurbanipal (b.c. (>(>i), 

 the equality of day and night has been noted, each con- 

 sisting of six periods or kasj)u, each of two hours' duration. 

 These periods of diurnal measurement were each again sub- 

 divided into three periods or watches of two hours each, 

 and each astronomical occurrence was carefully noted as to 

 the period in which it occurred. But the fact that the 

 periods of the equinoxes and the solstices were made the 

 time of great religious festivals was first made clear by the 

 discovery of a calendar of the Babylonian year, which is 

 now supplemented by the valuable tablet recording the 

 solar festivals discovered by Mr. Rassam amid the ruins of 

 the ancient city of Sippara of the Sun, the Chaldean 

 Heliopolis. This tablet, dated on the twentieth day of 

 the month Nisan, in the thirty-first year of Nabubaliddina, 

 king of Babylon, records the four great solar festivals of 

 that year which were honoured by donations from the 

 great king. The first point to be ascertained is the date of 

 this document before the Christian era, and this we can 

 approximately arrive at from his reign being synchronous 

 with those of two of the important monarchs of the middle 

 Assyrian empire. He appears first in the records of 

 Assyria in B.C. 879, and he concluded a treaty of peace with 

 Shalmaneser II., which lasted until B.C. 853, when his son 

 succeeded him as ruler. Upon these facts we may place 

 the date of this important record as from B.C. 853 to 

 B.C. 860. The dates of the ecjuinoxial festivals given in 

 this record are as follows : — 



On the seventh day of Nisan. This was the feast of the 

 new year, and corresponded to the Jewish Passover. 

 Corresponding to this feast of the vernal equinox there 

 was in Tisri or Tasrituv, the seventh month, on the seventh 

 day, the fea'^t of the autumnal equinox. We know from 



* Tliis interesting essay was sent us several years ago, and 

 marked for early insertion, but was mislaid in a volume of star 

 maps which had been used in examining some of its astronomical 

 statements. It curiously confirms many of the ideas to which I have 

 been led in drawing up my essays on " The Unknowable." I have 

 recently obtained other evidence about tbe star? as interpreted in 

 ancient times which will be found, I thinlc, to render Mr. Boscawen's 

 subject especially interesting. — Ed. 



the astronomical tablets that the four points on the great 

 circle marked by the equinoxial and solsticial periods were 

 called the positions of the nibirn, or "crossings," or "pass- 

 ings over." In the Creation tablets these points are said to 

 have been specially fixed by the god Bel or Belus, whom 

 both the inscriptions and Berosus agree in making the 

 ruler of the astronomical bodies, times, and seasons. The 

 above tablet now reveals to us the very important fact of 

 the existence and observation of a second pair of older 

 equinoxial festivals. On the tenth day of Airu or lyar, the 

 second month, and on the fourteenth day of Marchesvan, 

 the eighth month, are a second pair of corresponding 

 festivals, which from their positions on the great circle are 

 evidently old equinoxial festivals, which by the precession 

 of the equinoxes had given place to a new pair of 

 festivals. 



In the time of Hipparchus, and as far back as B.C. 2540, 

 the vernal equinox had fallen in the constellation Aries, and 

 in the astronomical inscriptions copied from the library of 

 Sargon of Aganne, a monarch who reigned prior to the 

 Median or Cassile dynasty in the nineteenth century B.C., 

 the vernal equinox was in Nisan and in Aries. But it is 

 evident from this inscription that there was a time in the 

 annals of B.ibylonian astronomy when the vernal and 

 autumnal equinoxes fell in Taurus and Scorpio. The 

 foundation of Babylonian astronomj' dates back to the 

 period of poliarchy, the period prior to the rise of the 

 Median dynasty ; and although we cannot accept the pro- 

 digious antiquity which Berosus and other Greek writers 

 assign to it, the remote period of its existence is clearly 

 evident. The compilation of the great astronomical work, 

 consisting of seventy tablets or books, entitled '' Namar 

 Beli, the Illumination of Bel," an edition of which has been 

 found in the royal library at Nineveh, was a work carried 

 out by order of Sargon I., King of Aganne, a monarch 

 whose rule was prior to the Median conquest. As regards 

 this work there is much internal evidence that it was pre- 

 pared by the Kusho-Semitic people, not by the Tartar 

 Akkadians. With the former the nightly observation of 

 the stars during their nomadic wanderings had led to the 

 development of a certain amount of natural science regard- 

 ing the celestial phenomena. In the pages of the gi'eat 

 Babylonian astronomical work there aie affbrded many 

 interesting glimpses of the popular life and thoughts. The 

 stars are entitled " the sheep," and an important star, which 

 I am inclined to regard as the pole star of the period, bore 

 the name of the star " Sib-zi-AX-NA," "the shepherd of tiie 

 heavenly flock " ; while the morning and evening stars * 

 bore such poetic titles as Luli.m, " the leaders," or, as an 

 inscription shows the word in pastoral phraseology to mean, 

 " the bell wether," or " leader of the flock." In the omens 

 deduced from celestial appearances we find such as affect 

 the life of the nomad, " Rain in heaven, floods in the 

 channels," reminditig us of tbe favourite Arabexpression, "The 

 stars have brought rain," " Cattle are safe in the pastures," 

 " The enemy sweeps all away." Such phrases as these, 

 written three or four thousand years ago, have still a 

 close agreement with modern Bedouin Arab life. The 

 Akkadian element which appears in the astronomy and 

 astrology of the Babylonians is most apparent in the 

 abstruse mathematical calculations and theories of star- 

 influences on the life, which result from the Fetish or 

 Animist creed of the Tartar Akkadians, and in which, 

 when the tablets have been thoroughly examined, I 

 expect that we shall find the basis of the Cabbalistic 



* I should be disposed to doubt this interpretation — that is, if 

 the words " morning and evening .stars '' signify, as usual, Venus. 

 Might not the stars heliacally rising and setting be understood 1 



