654 Sitzung der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 



Node, is a very material element; affecting as it does the in- 

 terval between the Opposition and the beginning or ending. I 

 believe that it will be found by calculation (which, however, I 

 leave it to professed astronomers to make) that it is possible to 

 reduce all the observations of eclipses which I have mentioned 

 to harmony with calculations by adopting Professor's Adams's 

 values of the coefficients of t 2 in the terms expressing the 

 values of g, &r, w and 0; and by Computing all the elements 

 of the eclipse for a time later than that of the actual time of 

 Observation by a small fraction of a day, multiplied by the 

 Square of the number of centuries frdm AD 1800; this last 

 correction, which acts in the opposite direction to Adams's, being 

 due to the retardation of the diurnal motion caused by the 

 tides. What the fraction of a day is wbich should be multi- 

 plied by t 2 will be best determined by calculating from ancient 

 eclipses; and among these I flatter myself that the new eclipse 

 of Sennacherib will be a very important element in the calcu- 

 lation. It gives both a major and a minor limit to the moon's 

 elongation at sunrise. It must be great enough to permit the 

 moon to be visible above the Western horizon, allowing for 

 parallax and refraction, and yet not too great for the distance 

 of the centres of the moon and shadow to be equal to the 

 sum of their semidiameters. 



I am, however, assuming that the Assyrian tablet affirms 

 that the moon emerged from the shadow while the sun was 

 rising. The moon, it says, did something then; and I cannot 

 conceive what eise it could be. What it did is expressed by a 

 Single verb ihmu; and I have never met this verb, nor any 

 word that I can recognize as a derivative from the same root, 

 in any other Assyrian passage. It strikes me, however, that it 

 is etymologically connected with a Hebrew word, to which the 

 sense that I have assigned to the Assyrian one can be attributed 

 without any violence. The verb ihmu is obviously analogous to 

 ikmu, which, as well as the first person akmu, are common in 

 Assyrian inscriptions. These latter signify "he burned, I burned," 

 and are evidently the representatives of the Hebrew ST.S-, JTSN. 

 In fact, the Assyrians confounded the letters » and i; the ter- 

 mination in u in place of i, (which is almost universal in verbs 



