iio Hntton Webster 



have no evidence that in the third or second milleniums before 

 our era Babylonian astronomy had made such great attainments. 

 Up to the present time it has not been possible to trace the 

 Babylonian names of the seven planets and the order in which 

 they appear to an earlier period than the seventh century, B.C.-^ 

 It follows, therefore, that the cult of seven could not have 

 originated in the observation of the seven planets, though it is 

 quite conceivable that after their recognition the belief in the 

 sanctity of seven was thereby much strengthened. It further 

 follows that the so-called planetary or astrological week, in which 

 the seven days are named after the planets must have developed 

 long after seven-day weeks were known and generally used in 

 western Asia. 



The various problems raised by the study of the planetary week in its 

 origin and diffusion need only be briefly treated in this connection. The 

 astrological conception of the seven planets as rulers or regents of the 

 week appears for the first time in Alexandrian speculations during the 

 Hellenistic era. It is obvious that these ideas could not have been derived 

 from the Jews who, on the testimony of the Old Testament, were familiar 

 with not more than two planets, the morning star, Venus, and Saturn 

 (Isaiah, xiv. 12; Amos, v. 26). The Jews moreover had no special names 

 for the days of their week (except for the Sabbath), but indicated each 

 day by the ordinal numbers, a practice still followed by jMohammedan 

 peoples and by the Greeks, Slavs, and Finns in modern Europe. Nor can 

 the origin of the week-day names be sought in Assyria or Babylonia ; the 

 Babylonians certainly associated some of their principal deities with the 

 seven planets and even ascribed to every day in the month its appropriate 

 divinity, but there is nothing in the cuneiform records to indicate a 

 practice of specifically naming each day in the /-day period after a 

 planetary god or goddess. None of the week days, save perhaps the 

 seventh (infra), appears to have been named at all. The most that can 

 be said with any degree of certainty is that the belief in the influence of 



that the two appearances of Venus in the morning and evening were 

 thought of by them as two different, stars with the name Maszaroth 

 (Schiaparelli, op. cit., 48, 85 sqq., 174 sq.), an interpretation, however, 

 by no means certain. 



"^ Ginzel, in Klio, 1901, i. 189. Nebuchadnezzar (605-561 B.C.) in the 

 India House Inscription boasts of having raised a temple to the seven 

 rulers of heaven and earth. Other instances reach back to Asshurbanipal 

 of Assyria (668-626 B.C.). 



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