163 
1894.] Gr. Thibaut —-Babylonian Origin of the Lunar Zodiac. 
Babylonian Tablets as the original of the different lunar zodiacs. As 
said at the outset of this paper, the hypothesis of Babylon having been 
the place where such a zodiac was first established was not an unlikely 
one, at a time when hardly any thing authentic was known about Baby¬ 
lonian Astronomy. But at present that hypothesis has greatly lost in 
probability. We now know, from authentic Babylonian sources, that 
the Chaldeans, from an early time, distinguished twelve zodiacal constel- 
lationSj and referred to them, or else to certain definite stars in them, the 
positions of the planets. The number of those definite stars, or star- 
groups, amounted, in later times at any rate, to more than thirty, per¬ 
haps thirty-six. It is possible that an earlier series, used for the same 
purposes, consisted of twenty-four members only. But there are no 
traces of any series consisting of that number of stations which is cha¬ 
racteristic of a lunar zodiac, viz., twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Nor is 
there anything like a characteristic agreement between the stars and 
star-groups, constituting the lunar zodiacs of the Hindus, Arabs and 
Chinese, and the series of normal stars used by the Babylonian Astro¬ 
nomers. The conclusion to be drawn from all this, is that the hypo¬ 
thesis of the Babylonian origin of the Nakshatras , Manzils and Sieu has, 
for the present at least, to be set resolutely aside. 
