I L4 Hut ton Webster 



form are traced to the close of the third millennium, it is told 

 how Merodach or Marduk, having created and ordered the heav- 

 enly bodies, then placed the moon in the sky to make known the 

 days and divide the month with her phases. Although this inter- 

 esting production in its mutilated state mentions only the seventh 

 and fourteenth ( ?) days we are entitled to believe that the original 

 text also referred to the twenty-first and twenty-eighth days, as 

 is indicated in the translation given below.-" In another record of 

 later date, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth 

 days are specifically indicated as the days of Sin, the moon-god.-^ 

 That these four days enjoyed a special significance is further indi- 

 cated by a passage in an omen calendar which declares that the 

 appearance of a halo about the moon on the seventh, fourteenth, 

 twenty-first and twenty-eighth days is to be considered as an 

 eclipse of that luminary.-^ In Babylonian astrology an eclipse 



^ Lines 12 sqq.: 



" Nannar, the moon-god, he brought forth, and entrusted the night 



to him ; 

 Placed him there, as a luminary of night, to mark off the days ; 

 Month after month, he fashioned him as full moon (saying) : 

 'At the beginning of the moon, when evening begins, 

 Let thy horns shine, to mark off the heavens ; 

 On the seventh day make half the disk. 

 Stand perpendicular . . . with thy first half; 

 When at sunset thou risest on the horizon 

 Stand opposite her [on the 14th] in brightest splendor 

 [From the 15th] on, approach again the course of the sun. 

 [On the 2ist] stand perpendicular again to the sun, 

 [From the 22nd] on ... to seek his course 

 [On the 28th to the sun] approach and hold judgment.'" 



I have used the version by W. Muss-Arnolt (R. F. Harper, Assy)-ian 

 and Babylonian Literature, New York, 1901, p. 296). See further, L. W. 

 .King, The Seven Tablets of Creation, London, 1902, i. 78 sqq. The expres- 

 sion "stand perpendicular" on the 7th and 21st days refers to the moon's 

 position as regards the earth or the sun — that is, the meridian — in which 

 she stands at sunset when in her first or last quarter. 



^ Rawlinson, op. cit., iii. 64, i8b. In the period following Hammurabi 

 (c. 1900 B.C.) Nannar and Sin are thoroughly identified. 



^Ibid., iii. 64, series Sin ina tamartisu. 



114 



