SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 



lunar months with the solar year, was effected. It is 

 clear, however, according to Smith, "that the first 28 

 days of every month were divided into four weeks of 

 seven days each ; the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, 

 twenty - eighth days respectively being Sabbaths, and 

 that there was a general prohibition of work on these 

 days." Here, of course, is the foundation of the Hebrew 

 system of Sabbatical days which we have inherited. 

 The sacredness of the number seven itself the belief in 

 which has not been quite shaken off even to this day 

 was deduced by the Assyrian astronomer from his ob- 

 servation of the seven planetary bodies namely, Sin 

 (the moon), Samas (the sun), Umunpawddu (Jupiter), 

 Dilbat (Venus), Kaimanu (Saturn), Gudud (Mercury), 

 Mustabarru-mutanu (Mars). 11 Twelve lunar periods, 

 making up approximately the solar year, gave peculiar 

 importance to the number twelve also. Thus the 

 zodiac was divided into twelve signs which astrono- 

 mers of all subsequent times have continued to recog- 

 nize ; and the duodecimal system of counting took pre- 

 cedence with the Babylonian mathematicians over the 

 more primitive and, as it seems to us, more satisfactory 

 decimal system. 



Another discrepancy between the Babylonian and 

 Egyptian years appears in the fact that the Babylonian 

 new year dates from about the period of the vernal 

 equinox and not from the solstice. Lockyer associates 

 this with the fact that the periodical inundation of the 

 Tigris and Euphrates occurs about the equinoctial 

 period, whereas, as we have seen, the Nile flood comes 

 at the time of the solstice. It is but natural that so 

 important a phenomenon as the Nile flood should make 

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