Rest Days; A Sociological Study 109 



It might therefore be argued with some plausibility that Babylonia 

 formed the center from which the lore connected with seven 

 passed to adjoining regions of western Asia and thence into other 

 parts of the ancient world. ^^ 



Many Assyriologists have connected the symbolism of seven 

 with the seven stars visible to the naked eye which traverse the 

 celestial zodiac. For the Babylonian astrologers and astronomers 

 these were the sun, the moon, and the five larger planets, Mercury, 

 \^enus. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.^'' But as the Italian astron- 

 omer Schiaparelli has remarked, to associate the sun and moon, 

 bodies giving so much light, and of so appreciable a diameter 

 with the five so much smaller planets is scarcely to be predicated 

 of the earliest Babylonian cosmography. To perceive their com- 

 mon characteristic, /. e., periodic movement within the zodiacal 

 belt, prolonged and accurate observations are essential. -° We 



'* Cf. von Adrian, op. cit., 262 sqq. The marked predominance of seven 

 among the Hebrews, if not wholly explained by borrowing from Baby- 

 lonia, may reasonably be assumed to have been much influenced by 

 Babylonian conceptions. On the Hebrew cult of seven see Hehn, op. cit., 

 77-90; Meinhold, op. cit., 20 sqq.; Zockler, in Herzog, Plitt, and Hauck, 

 Realencyklopadie fiir protestantische Theologie^ s. v. " Sieben." 



"On the seven planets see Zimmern, in Schrader, Kcilinschriffeii,^ 620 

 sqq. 



^Astronomy in the Old Testament, Oxford, 1905, p. 134. It is also 

 necessary to have noticed that Mercury and Venus as morning stars 

 are the same as Mercury and Venus as evening stars. This again is not 

 what might be expected of primitive astronomj'. The old Maori, for 

 instance, regarded the morning and evening star as dififerent planets. 

 " Tawera is their Lucifer, and Merimeri their Hesperus ; and under these 

 two names the beauty of the planet Venus is frequently celebrated in their 

 poetry" (Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders,' 

 219). Similarly the early Greeks held the morning star, 'Eua-cpdpos, and 

 "EffTrepos , the evening star, to be different bodies, and their identity was 

 not recognized until the time of Pythagoras in the 6th century B. C. 

 (Roscher, Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der griechischen iind rdniischen Mythol- 

 ogie, s. v., " Planeten," col. 2521). A similar misconception must have 

 been true of the Babylonians among whom the planet Venus (Dilbat) as 

 a morning star was considered masculine, and as an evening star feminine 

 (Hehn, op. cit., 48; referring to Rawlinson, op. cit., in. 53, 2). With 

 regard to the Jews it has been argued by the astronomer previously cited 



109 



