OF THE ANCIENT ARABS. 183 



Wandering night and day in the open desert, the 

 stars became "an object of curious contemplation. 

 They were the giiides of his nocturnal marches, and 

 the symbols from which he inferred changes in the 

 air and weather. It was necessary to know their 

 periodical returns, in order to regulate the labours 

 of the field and the succession of the seasons. Like 

 the Indians, this people applied themselves chiefly 

 to the study of the fixed stars ; contrary to the cus- 

 tom of other nations, whose observations were 

 mostly confined to the planets : and hence the dif- 

 ference between the Chaldean and Indian idolatry. 



Of the high antiquity of this sort of astronomical 

 knowledge among them we have the most decisive 

 arguments both in sacred and profane history. Job, 

 in the sublime Arabian poem that bears his name, 

 speaks in a manner that evinces how familiar, even 

 in his age, were the names and the appearances of 

 the celestial bodies. What he says of Orion, Arc- 

 turus, Mazzaroth, and the Pleiades indicates that 

 the nomenclature and phenomena of the science 

 were then no recent discoveries. The natives of 

 the plains of Shinar, and the Ethiopian negroes 

 under the tropic, have each been recorded as the 

 inventors or first cultivators of astronomy. On this 

 point antiquity is not unanimous. That the Sabae- 

 ans preceded them in this science is hinted by 

 Diodorus, Plato, and Cicero. Lucian expresses him- 

 self more plainly when he says, it came originally 

 from Ethiopia,— a name appUed to the country east- 

 ward as well as westward of the Red Sea, and which 

 his description would here lead us to identify with 

 the Happy Arabia.* 



*In his dramatic s1ory of the Runaway Slaves, Lucian intro- 

 duces Philosophy, who declares to Jupiter, that from the Brah- 

 mins she repaired straight to Ethiopia ; thence to the Egyptians, 

 whose poets and prophets she mstnictfid ; and then she betook 

 herself to Babylon to teach the Chaldeans. This imaginary 

 journey is perhaps a true delineation of the original route of the^ 

 arts and sciences. — Lnnrheer's Sabcean Researches. 



