A typical diary entry begins with a statement on the length of the previousmonth. It might have been 29 or 30 days. Then, the present month's firstobservation - the time between sunset and moonset on the day of the firstwaxing crescent - is given, followed by similar information on the timesbetween moonsets and sunrises and between moonrises and sunsets, at fullmoon. At the end of the month, the interval between the rising of the lastwaning crescent moon and sunrise is recorded.
When a lunar or solar eclipse took place, its date, time, and durationwere noted along with the planets visible, the star that was culminating,and the prevailing wind at the time of the eclipse. Significant pointsin the various planetary cycles were all tabulated, and the dates of thesolstices, equinoxes, and significant appearances of Sirius were provided.
The Babylonian astronomers used a set of 30 stars as references forcelestial position, and their astronomical diaries detailed the locationsof the moon and planets with respect to the stars. Reports of bad weatheror unusual atmospheric phenomena - like rainbows and haloes - found theirway into the diaries, too. Finally, various events of local importance(fires, thefts, and conquests), the amount of rise or fall in the riverat Babylon, and the quantity of various commodities that could be purchasedfor one silver shekel filled out the diligent astronomer's report.
By the sixth century BC, Neo-Babylonian astronomers were computing inadvance the expected time intervals between moonrise or moonset and sunriseor sunset for various days in the months ahead. These calculations werebased on systematic observations. Later, when combined with numerical tabulationsof the monthly movement of the sun, the position of sun and moon at newmoon, the length of daylight, half the length of night, an eclipse warningindex, the rate of the moon's daily motion through the stars, and otherrelated information, these computations enabled reasonably detailed andaccurate predictions of what the moon would do and when it would do it.
Planets received similar attention, but because their movements werenot uniform, the Mesopotamian astronomers had to devise mathematical techniquesthat would take variations in motion into account. As Jupiter, for example,makes its way through the zodiac in almost exactly 12 years, each yearit more or less moves into a different zone, or constellation. Each yearit also is seen in opposition to the sun - rising at sunset, setting atsunrise - but because Jupiter's motion is not uniform, it won't reach oppositionon the same date each year. The Babylonians expressed this a little differentlythan we do and preferred to specify the position of Jupiter at each oppositionrather than the date. The effect is the same, however, and their tablesshow that they compensated for Jupiter's nonuniform motion by increasingits shift in position by the same amount for each opposition in one halfof the 12-year cycle and by decreasing the shift by the same amount eachtime during the other half. When the shift in position is plotted throughthe successive oppositions of the planet, a zigzag line results.
Of course, the Babylonians never developed completely accurate representationsof nonuniform motion, but in the later dynasties of Mesopotamia, and especiallyin the Seleucid period (301-164 BC) following the death of Alexander theGreat, Babylonian (during this period called Chaldean) astronomers approximatedthe cyclical accelerations and decelerations of the moon and planets withthe "zigzag functions." They did this numerically, not graphically, butthe technique worked well enough for their purposes.
Despite the extensive written record of Babylonian astronomy, we havevery little knowledge of the instruments used in ancient Mesopotamia, andwe know even less about the observatories which must have existed. A clay"astrolabe" from Assyria is on display in the British Museum in London.Actually, a true astrolabe is used to measure the angular height of a celestialobject, and the Assyrian devices look more like diagrams of the zones ofthe sky. They seem to be tables of handy astronomical information, designedto guide the astronomer in keeping time. Apart from a few limited referencesto an instrument used for measuring transits, the gnomon (or shadow stick),and the water clock, this is the complete inventory of our knowledge ofBabylonian astronomical instruments.
It should not surprise us, however, that the astronomical instrumentsand observatories of ancient civilizations are hard to find. It is unlikelythere were many of them, and the observatories that still exist may behard to recognize for what they are. The actual equipment probably disappearedlong ago, and the walls that housed the ancient astronomers may be allthat remains today. If such observatories were incorporated into templesor palaces, they might be even harder to recognize. When we find a structurewith astronomical alignments, it is not always easy to tell if the structurewas used ritually or for actual observation or both.
Although particular gods may differ in terms of the resources they arebelieved to control, control is the attribute they share. What they control,and how they do it, determines exactly what sorts of gods they are. Celestialgods control the passage of time by marking it and measuring it. They controldirection and space through the locations of their comings and goings.As masters of time and space, they move the world. They make it change.Day changes into night. Winter melts into spring. Rivers flood and fall.Grain sprouts, grows, and ripens. In these cycles of the world and in ourdaily lives we see patterened change, and it is driven by the sky.
The sky is one of the few things that provides concrete images uponwhich our conception of immortality might condense. The sky is itself eternal,and its occupants are continuously resurrected. There, in the celestialpassages and returns, is the contrast between what is mortal and what isdivine. The power of the celestial gods was revealed by their light. Anyonestanding in sunlight senses its energy. Its warmth is unmistakable. Thoughobviously weaker, the moon and planets also command respect. They shinenot only in the blackened vault of night but, on occasion, in the brightertwilight sky, and some can even be seen in broad daylight. Again and again,gods were associated with light. For example, Any, or An, was the greatest of the Sumerian gods. Hisname was the word for "sky" and "high," and the written symbol for hisname was shared with the word diugir: "shining". Equal reverence for the softer, indirect light of the moon is evidentfrom a text from Ur, in the Mesopotamia of the third millenium BC: Nanna, great lord Another Sumerian prayer invokes the brilliance of Inanna, the goddessVenus, in the evening twilight: The pure torch that flares in the sky, In ancient Babylon, the sun was Shamash. His watchful eye noted allthings and judged everyone. Justice resided in him. Hammurabi, the greatcodifier of Babylonian law, is shown standing before Shamash on the stonecolumn, or stela, inscribed with this king's famous Code. Through law thesun's order was transferred to earth. Compared to the sun, the moon's rapid changes make it seem practicallyvagrant, but it is useful as a timekeeper, and many people have accordedit divine status as such. Babylonia's moon god was Sin, the "lord of knowledge." He presided overthe calendar and astrological divination. In accord with the approximatenumber of days in a month, 30 was his sacred number.
In ancient Babylon, Marduk was honored as king of the gods and quitespecifically associated with the planet Jupiter. In Greece, Zeus was chiefof the Olympians, with dominion over the planet Jupiter. In that sensehe was the counterpart of Marduk. By contrast, the Egyptians portrayedJupiter - and Mars and Saturn as well - with the falcon head of the skygod Horus. The role of Jupiter-Marduk was preeminent in Babylon, for he was creditedwith the world's creation, bringing order out of chaos. Texts of the Babyloniancreation myth are preserved on cuneiform tablets, some from the libraryof Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria in the seventh century BC, but the taleitself is much older, apparently deriving from the Old Babylonian empire,about 1800 BC. In the myth, Marduk establishes order by killing Tiamat,the dragon of primordial chaos. From the monster's body he fashions thesky and the sea. Then he prepares to take advantage of his victory. Hisprice for his service is the right to fashion an ordered cosmos. First,he organizes the sky, apportioning it among the other ogds, symbolizedin the constellations overhead. The year is next. Marduk decides how longit will be and subdivides it into months, their passage regulated by thestars he choooses. More celestial references, contrived by Marduk, putthe world in order. He also marks the horizon, the zenith, and the pointswhere the sun might emerge and depart. He puts up the moon and assignsit to light the night and count the days of the month. Clearly Marduk wasthe ruler of the sky. Jupiter's course through the sky, Marduk decides, will guide the starsand planets. This may seem like an odd choice to make. The constant sun,perhaps, would define things better. But Jupiter's path through the skyfollows the ecliptic, the annual path of the sun, more closely than theother planets known to the ancients. Also, Jupiter's configurations inthe stars repeat themselves almost exactly every 12 years. For example,Jupiter will come into opposition (that is, be opposite the sun in thesky) 12 times in a span of time just five days longer than 12 years, andthe last opposition will occur among the same stars as the first. These aspects of Jupiter's movement, combined with its brilliance amongthe stars of the nighttime sky, probably influenced early astronomers touse the planet as a reference, a function reflected, it seems, in the myth.There are uncertainties, however. The actual name for the planet used in the text is Nebiru. Although this did mean Jupiter, it meant other thingsas well, and sometimes it meant pole, or pivot. The north celestial poleis a key reference for the sky's rotation, so either or both meanings mayhave been intended in the creation epic. The other planets also played important, often similar, roles in thepantheons of ancient cultures. And so, the Babylonians associated Ishtar,their goddess of love and fertility, with the planet Venus, another parallel- and perhaps direct antecedent - to Greek and, ultimately, Roman tradition. Apart from its brightness, the most distinctive feature of Venus isits cycle as a morning star and evening star. Accordingly, the Egyptianssymbolized Venus as the Bennu, a heron-like bird commonly equated withthe phoenix. The Bennu belonged to Osiris, probably because the Egyptiansassociated death and resurrection with the planet's evening and morningappearances, or perhaps with its conjunctions behind the sun and its periodsof visibility. Something similar may be behind the Mesopotamian myth of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld. Among the Babylonians, Mercury was Nebo, the record keeper and messengerof the gods. Its status as messenger may be related to the quickness ofthe planet in its circuit from west of the sun to east of the sun and backto the west again. Mercury's swiftness also made him the gods' messengerin Greece and Rome, as well as the escort of the souls to the realm ofthe dead. It is easy to pick out Mars in the nighttime sky. Its red color setsit apart from the other planets and from most of the stars. The color -the same as blood - also explains its association with gods of war: Nergalin Babylonia, Ares in Greece, and, of course, the Roman Mars. Finally, Saturn, the last of ancient "wandering stars," was known asNinib to the Babylonians. After an initial career as a sun god and patronof the ancient city of Nippur, Ninib became affiliated with springtimeand planting.
This text refers to the first crescent ("appearance") occurring on theexpected date ("stands in a fixed position"). "When the Moon out of itscalculated time tarries and is not seen, there will be an invasion of amighty city ..." Unusual or unexpected behavior was regarded as a message.The views might be bad, but a proper word or spell recited by a knowledgeablepriest could avert the threat. "When at the Moon's appearance in the intercalarymonth Adar its horns are pointed and dark, the prince will grow strongand the land will have abundance." These texts tell us that the Babylonian prognosticators evaluated thematch between what the calendar predicted and what the sky actually did.Departures from the expected order were viewed with concern.
He bade the moon come forth; entrusted night (to him) The "crown" is the moon's fully lit disk, and the horns refer, of course,to the waxing crescent. On the seventh day a "half crown" describes thehalf-lit first quarter moon, and the rest of the text narrates the wayin which the moon should continue to measure out the months. Some of the Sumerian month names have survived in cuneiform texts and,like the Egyptian names, refer to the months' principal feasts: "the Monthof the Feast of Shulgi" and "the Month of the Eating of Barley of Ningursu."Feasts were scheduled by the moon's phases, with regular celebrations atthe first crescent, first quarter (seventh day), full moon (fifteenth day),and last day. The Sumerians divided the year into summer, or emesh, and winter, orenten. We know the New Year holiday was consecrated by a symbolic "wedding"of the king with a high priestess. This ritual reenacted the marriage ofDumuzi, a god associated with the growth of grain and dates, and Inanna,a goddess identified with fecundity and sex, and was scheduled, most likely,in spring, when life seems to be rekindled in every blossom, seed, andfruit. Of course, intercalation was the only way to keep the Mesopotamian lunarcalendar in step with the seasons, and some inscriptions imply an extramonth was added before the month of autumnal equinox. Other texts referto a thirteenth month slipped in just prior to the vernal equinox. Whateverrule was followed in the early period, by 1000 BC or so Babylonian calendarpriests were intercalating months aoccording to an eight-year cycle. Duringthis period three extra months were added. In Chaldean times, a "Metonic",or 19-year cycle with 7 extra months, was probably in use. This interval,which equates 19 tropical years with 235 lunar months, is named after theGreek astronomer Meton, who introduced its use in the Mediterranean worldin the last decades of the fifth century BC. Although it looks as thougha numerical rule, and no observed celestial event, determined the yearsin which extra months were added, A. Sachs, a specialist in cuneiform andMesopotamian astronomy, believes intercalations were designed to keep theannual heliacal rising of Sirius in a particular month. If this be so,it again stresses the important role of the sky's brightest star as a signalof the seasons and calibrator of the calendar for ancient societies. Itsastronomical attributes - its brightness and the timing of its appearances- made it valuable wherever it could be seen. No matter what method was used to keep the Mesopotamian lunar calendarcoordinated with the seasons, only the king could declare when an extramonth was to be inserted.
Babylonian priests performed a kind of ritual drama at the New Yearceremony in ancient Mesopotamia. It, too, initiated the cycle of ceremonialrenewal and involved a recitation of the Enuma elish, the Babylonian creationmyth. The priests also reenacted some of the key events in the story ofMarduk's victory over chaos and Marduk's assembly of an ordered cosmos.Unlike the other rituals of renewal we have considered, however, the BabylonianNew Year did not take place in winter. It was called the akitu, and itwas held at the equinox, either in spring or in fall. Records of intercalatedmonths suggest that in Old Babylonian times the autumnal equinox startedthe year. Later, the New Year was celebrated in spring. Which date doesnot really matter. What counts is the choice of a turning point in timethat was significant to the Babylonians. More than one reason must havesuggested an equinox, and only hints of those original reasons remainedin the ceremonies that continued to commemorate them. In the first few days of the ceremony, Marduk was symbolically confinedin what texts called "the Mountain." For three days Marduk remains in thisunderworld, a realm of chaos and the dead. The term "mountain" also refersto the tall, multilevel temple-towers (or ziggurats) the Mesopotamiansbuilt of clay bricks on the flat flood plain of the Tigris and Euphratesrivers. It is possible that this part of the ceremony was connected insome way with the ziggurat. On the fourth day of the akitu, the Enuma elishwas repeated, and this activity, accompanied perhaps by others, broughtMarduk back to life and allowed him to "emerge" from the Mountain, or theunderworld. We have already seen how such metaphors equate with sunriseand with the start of the New Year. Marduk was not Shamash, the sun, but he assumed many attributes of thesun as part of the elevation of his status in Neo-Babylonian times. Marduk'semergence from the Mountain at the equinox and New Year, in any case, representsthe creation of world order. We already know that is Marduk's role in thecreation epic. By staging this myth in ritual terms at a turning pointof the seasons and the year, the Babylonians recognized the cyclic natureof the world. The end of each year is a reentry into the time before creationof the world. The previous world must break down before it is refabricated,and that is why Marduk is imprisoned and slain in the Mountain. Some of the mythological scenes portrayed on cylinder seals may relateto these ideas. When the Mesopotamians wanted to put an official stampon a clay document or protect the integrity of the contents of a container,they impressed a design in the soft clay by rolling a small stone cylinderin it. The cylinder was intricately carved, and one of these seals, fromthe Akkadian period (2360-2180 BC) and now in the British Museum, portraysthe sun god, Shamash, brandishing a saw and emitting undulating rays oflight as he emerges in a gap between two mountain peaks. The god at theright, with streams of water and fish flowing about his shoulders, is Ea.The goddess on the left, perhaps heralding the appearance of the sun, isthe goddess Ishtar, who was sometimes identified as the planet Venus oras the morning star. Ea's waters here may represent the spring floods.We can't be certain, for no text accompanies the picture. But if the springtimeis meant, the scene may symbolize the vernal equinox sunrise, and possiblythe New Year. More prayers and rituals continued the New Year ceremony, which lastedfor 11 days. A ritual called "fixing of the destinies" and clearly involvedwith omen readings for the coming year took place. Also, the Babyloniansperpetuated the "Sacred Marriage" ceremony of the Sumerians. This timethe king represented Tammuz and a high priestess was Ishtar. But the messagewas the same: fertility. The passage of cyclical time meants in Babylonwhat it meant elsewhere: renewal - in the gods, in the king, in the fertilityof the land, in the calendar, and in the sky.
References to Venus as early as 3000 BC are known from evidence at Uruk,an important early Sumerian city in southern Iraq. One clay tablet foundat the site says "star Inanna," and another contains symbols for the words"star, setting sun, Inanna." Inanna is Venus, known later as Ishtar, andthe Uruk tablets specify her celestial identity with the symbol for "star":an eight-pointed star. At this early stage the symbol seems to carry nomore meaning than that, though it eventually evolves, in cuneiform writing,into a sign that means "god" and is placed before the actual names of deities.If the relationship between gods and the sky were not already explicitenough, this development in Mesopotamian writing would confirm it. By the Kassite Dynasty, roughly 1600-1150 BC, the eight-pointed starhad acquired a more specific meaning. It belonged to Ishtar, as Venus,and shows up on numerous kudurru, or boundary stones, which were an innovationof the Kassite kings. Such stones were set up to mark field boundaries.The earliest of them record and confirm royal grants of land and thereforeestablish title to the territory they represent. Most of them are 2 to3 feet high. Elaborately carved with the emblems of sky gods and a detailedtext, they verify celestial approval of the transaction and warn othersto watch their step. After an appropriate description of the land in question and a listof those involved in effecting the transaction, the boundary stone of KingMarduk-ahe-erba forcefully counsels, Whenever ... any one It was not a good idea to overrule the gods of the sky. Not all of the identities of the gods named and symbolized on kudurruare known, but most (and perhaps all) of them are celestial. Three prominentsymbols included on most stones refer unambiguously to Shamash, the sun;Sin, the moon; and Ishtar, the planet Venus. The emblem of Shamash is afour-pointed disk with undulating lines radiating intercardinally, andthis is a standard Mesopotamian symbol for the sun. The wavy lines couldbe radiating sunlight, the "net" of Shamash. For Sin, the stones have anobvious crescent moon, and the other large star P almost always with eightpoints P is Venus. Very direct symbolism in the signs for the sun and the moon and in severalother symbols whose meaning is understood tempt a guess that the symbolismin the Star of Ishtar is in some way equally direct. Perhaps the numbereight is itself symbolic, for Venus experiences an eight-year cycle. Duringthat time it passes through its complete evening star/morning star/eveningstar pattern five times. This means that a configuration of Venus recurson the same calendar date after eight years, which is how long five completeback-and-forth passes to either side of the sun take. To establish the importance of this cycle we must verify that the Mesopotamianswere familiar with it and made something special of it. In fact, we knowthey were well aware of it. Omen texts from the First Babylonian Dynasty(ca. 1900-1660 BC) confirm that the old Mesopotamian skywatchers understoodthat Venus as the morning star and as the evening star were the same thing.By the Seleucid period (ca 301-164 BC), we have a number of late goal-yeartexts in which the eight-year period was used to predict the appearancesof Venus. These goal-year texts are clay tablets that list astronomicaldata for a given year and also for years specified by adding an appropriatenumber to the starting year. For Venus, the number to be added is eight.Accordingly, the pattern in the table for Venus will work for every eighthyear from the year for which the table is prepared. For example, ProfessorOtto Neugebauer, one of the foremost historians of ancient science, describedone of the Venus goal-year texts and showed that it provides dates andpositions for Venus at last visibility as a morning star in steps of eightyears. Another lists the planet's reappearance as an evening star overthree eight-year intervals. Although the eight-year, five-cycle Venus period is close, it is notexact. After eight years, Venus is actually a little ahead of schedule,about 2.4 days. One text from the Neo-Babylonian period (626-539 BC), referringto Venus as Dilbat, records "Dilbat 8 years behind thee come back ... 4days thou shalt subtract." Here, the Mesopotamian planetwatcher is instructedto subtract four days to get the right date for Venus. This may appearto be in error, but it isn't. The 2.4-day correction applies to a solarcalendar and the Mesopotamians kept their calendar by the moon. Becausethe moon arrived 1.6 days late, Venus configurations recurred four daysearly, and the Neo-Babylonian astronomers adjusted their predictions. Unfortunately, the goal-year texts are rather late and do not confirmthat the eight-year cycle of Venus was known in Kassite times. We have,however, copies of a much earlier set of astronomical texts, the so-calledtablets of Ammizaduga. Ammizaduga (or Ammi-saduqa) was the next to thelast king of the First Babylonian Dynasty and probably ruled between 1650and 1550 BC. The exact dates are somewhat uncertain. Three decades afterthe end of his reign the Hittites deposed his successor, and somewherein that period the Kassite Dynasty began. The original tablets of Ammizaduga probably were inscribed around 1700-1600BC, but they are long gone. Copies survived, however, in the library ofthe Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668-626 BC) at Nineveh and are in the BritishMuseum today. In them, 21 years of Venus data are given - dates of thefirst and last appearances as a morning star and as an evening star anddurations of invisibility - along with appropriate omens. If on the 25th of Tammuz Venus disappeared in the west, for 7 daysremaining absent in the sky, and on the 2nd of Ab Venus was seen in theeast, there will be rains in the land; desolation will be wrought. (year8) Despite scribal errors, the texts clearly exhibit the eight-year cycleand indicate Mesopotamians in the middle of the second millenium BC wereaware of it. Apart from a few exceptions, an eight-pointed star is used exclusivelyfor Venus on the Kassite boundary stones. Other stars are usually representedby dots, and Sebitti, a group of stars, is illustrated as a cluster ofseven dots and appears on many of the kudurru with the Star of Ishtar.In later times the Ishtar symbol may have fallen into more general use,but during the time of the celestial boundary stones, the eight-pointedstar meant Venus.
The winged sun symbol was common in late Mesopotamian art. After theAssyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, the Achaemenians, a Persian dynasty(558-330 BC), ruled Babylonia and Assyria. Identical winged disks "fly"upon the walls of the great Achaemenid ceremonial center at Persepolis.Of course, the winged sun disk also appears on temples throughout upperEgypt. The form is slightly different, for the Mesopotamian version oftensports a feathered tail in addition to the outspread wings. It looks likea bird - as was intended - to suggest the idea of flight through the sky.
The Gods We Worship (back to top)
A perusal of nearly any ancient pantheon reveals the obvious: At leastsome of the gods, often the most important ones, are objects in the sky.The metaphoric reasons are not difficult to understand. The regular motionsof celestial objects made them agents of order that helped give meaningto the world below; endless repetition of their appearances and disappearances suggested immortality; their light commanded attention and connoted power.And being in the sky, with such a perspective on earth below, it was onlynatural to assume that the gods must know all because they could see all:To see the world, one's eyes must be in heaven.Immortality and Divinity (back to top)
If we are seeking immortality, the sky is a good place to start. We seeendless repetition there. Although we know that we ourselves will die,we see the sun, moon, and stars survive night after night, month aftermonth, year after year. They may disappear, but their absences are onlytemporary.
light shining in the clear skies,
wearing on his head a prince's headdress
right god for bringing forth day and night,
establishing the month
bringing the year to completion.
the heavenly light shining bright like the day,
the great queen of heaven, Inanna, I will hail ...
Of her majesty, of her greatness, of her exceeding dignity
of her brilliant coming forth in the evening sky
of her flaring in the sky - a pure torch -
of her standing in the sky like the sun and the moon,
known by all lands from south to north
of the greatness of the holy one of heaven
to the lady I will sing.The Gods in Heaven: Sun and Moon (back to top)
The particular appearance and behavior of certain celestial objects haveoften led different peoples in different places at different times to assignthe same symbolic values to them. The sun, for example, is both powerfuland dependable, as it pursues its orderly course through the seasons, andthese characteristics have inspired many peoples to see in it the sourceof all authority, law, and social order.The Wandering Gods (back to top)
In very earliest time the Greeks and the Romans do not seem to have differentiatedthe planets. Writing in the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Platodescribed the five "wanderers" as gods and mentioned that the practiceof associating them with specific Olympian gods was introduced by foreigners.The foreigners probably came from either Egypt or Mesopotamia. The latteris the more likely source since the attributes and characteristics of Babylonianplanetary gods parallel those of the Greek gods, while the early Egyptianrepresentations of planets do not.Time and Divination (back to top)
By observing what transpired overhead, shamans and astronomer-priests fashionedcalendars and scheduled ceremonies. They had access to the domain of thegods and the source of cosmic order; this allowed them access to "knowledge"of the state of the cosmos. They could, then, communicate the celestialsigns of the gods' intent to earth. Calendric divination made soothsayers,for example, out of the ancient Mesopotamian moonwatchers. In 1900, AssyriologistR. Campbell Thompson compiled hundreds of astronomical omens into a bookwith the engaging title "The Reports of The Magicians and Astrologers ofNineveh and Babylon." Many of the reports involve the moon: "When the Moonat its appearance stands in a fixed position, the gods intend the counselof the land for happiness."Calendars, Corrections, and Kings (back to top)
In Mesopotamia it was probably the Sumerians, the people who built theformative civilization of the region, who put the first formal calendarinto use. The Sumerian calendar was lunar, but its months began when thefirst crescent was sighted in the west. A passage in the Babylonian creationmyth echoes, in Marduk's instructions to the moon, a concern for the lunarcycle:
assigned to him adornment of the night to measure time;
and every month, unfailingly, he marked off by a crown.
"When the new moon is rising over the land
shine you with horns, six days to measure;
the seventh day, as half (your) crown (appear).
and (then) let periods of fifteen days be counterparts
two halves each month.
As, afterward, the sun gains on you on heaven's foundations,
wane step by step, reverse your growth!"Starting the Year (back to top)
Time, measured out in celestial tallies by skywatching shamans and calendarpriests, eventually rounds the last turn in the cycle of cosmic order andbegins the cycle anew. These technicians of the sacred punctuated thatjoint in time with ceremonies tha tconsecrated the moment and mirroredthe pattern of the sky. Such moments can occur, however, at various timesof the year. They are not necessarily restricted to the passage of theyear. Just when these moments are celebrated by any particular group ofpeople depends upon where they live, their way of life, and their particularperception of cosmic order.The Star of Ishtar (back to top)
Because some astronomical objects move through the sky in repeated andknown intervals of time, the behavior of the celestial gods associatedwith them can be symbolized numerically. Ishtar, as the planet Venus, perhapswas handled this way in the eight-pointed star that usually stands forher on Babylonian boundary stones.
shall arise and against
that field shall raise a claim
or cause a claim to be raised,
shall say the field
is not the gift of the king
and shall order
a thoughtless man, a fool, a deaf man
to approach that inscribed stone
and shall throw it into the water,
burn it with fire,
hide it in a field where it cannot be seen
May the great gods, as many as on this stone
by their names are mentioned
with an evil curse, that is without escape,
curse him.
May Anu, Enlil, and Ea
in anger look upon him and destroy
his life, [and] the children, his seed.
May Marduk, the lord of constructions (?),
stop up his rivers, and
Zarpanitum, the great mistress,
spoil his plans.
May Ninib and Gula, the lords of the boundary
and of this boundary stone,
cause a destructive sickness to be
in his body, so that, as long as he lives,
he may pass dark and bright red blood as water.
May Sin, the eye of heaven and earth, cause
leprosy to be in his body, so that
in the enclosure of his city he may not lie.
May the gods, all of them, as many as are mentioned
by their names, not grant him life for a single day.The Sun Takes Wing (back to top)
During the Assyrian period many of the same Old Babylonian symbols forcelestial objects persist on commemorative stelae, on temple walls, incylinder seal impressions, and in other formal contexts. A tablet thatmarks the restoration and refoundation of the temple of Shamash at Sippardisplays the three main symbols - sun, moon, and Venus - as a celestialstamp of approval upon the enterprise. Shamash is seated inside on a throne,and a large version of his wavy-lined, four-pointed sun disk rests upona table. In this period, however, the sun's emblem sometimes took a differentshape. A winged disk replaced the Shamash emblem, and often the primarygod of the Assyrians, Assur, was ensconced in the flaming disk. When theAssyrians ruled Mesopotamia, their national deity assumed most of the characteristicsof Marduk and occupied the same role as creator and sustainer of order.Similarly, Assur was associated with the sun, and so his appearance inthe flying disk of the sun was altogether natural.
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