The Week ■ 45 



they appear to have acquired what they possessed — the 

 inventors or discoverers of it ; nor were they the first to 

 misapply it to purposes of astrology, or to name the days 

 from the planets. Humboldt confidently says that shortly 

 before our era, the Egyptians had not named the days from 

 the planets, the signs of which were then perhaps only 

 recently known to them. But Humboldt does not apparently 

 consider, and perhaps could scarcely have been in possession 

 of the ethnological and philological evidence, which modern 

 research has revealed, of the great antiquity of a com- 

 paratively perfect civilisation and astronomy elsewhere, of 

 which the relics only were found in India and Chaldsea. He, 

 however, mentions that the Peruvians had a nine day cycle, 

 with a day of rest in each ; and that the Aztecs used weeks of 

 five days, which they named from deities, one of whom, 

 Wodan, was the counterpart of the Scandinavian Woden, 

 from whom our Wednesday is named. The Indian Wed- 

 nesday, Budhavaram, is thought to be derived from the 

 same original as ours. 



Mr. Proctor shows* that none of these peoples had any 

 original astronomy, any more than the Egyptians ; and I 

 find elsewhere -[• that they reckoned eclipses, &c, by rules, of 

 the origin and basis of which they had no knowledge. But 

 Mr. Proctor shows also that all their old astronomical records 

 present indications of having been derived from a far 

 superior but extinct civilisation, of which no historical vestige 

 remains, but which must have had its seat in a much more 

 northern latitude. He says, that the length of the winter 

 and summer days given in the oldest Brahminical and Persian 

 records — the oldest Babylonian star risings obtained by 

 Ptolemy— and the measurement of the earth adopted by 

 ancient astronomers, all correspond to a latitude of about 

 45° north. Finally he adduces reasons — from old Chaldsean 

 representations, which he reproduces, of Venus, Jupiter, and 

 Saturn, as Mylitta, Bel, and Msroch or Asshur ; and from 

 the fact of a plano-convex rock crystal lens having been 

 discovered by Layard at Nimroud — for believing that these 

 ancient astronomers probably possessed telescopic appliances 

 of sufficient perfection to enable them to discern the 

 crescent form of Yenus, the satellites of Jupiter, and perhaps 

 even the ring of Saturn. 



* Saturn and Ms System, (appendix on Chaldasan Astronomy). 

 f Bailly's Histoire de V 'Astronomic 



