Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text.
ANCIENT CALENDARS
AND CONSTELLATIONS
ANCIENT CALENDARS
AND CONSTELLATIONS
By the Hon. EMMELINE M. PLUNKET
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1903
[vii]
PREFACE
The Papers here collected and reprinted, withsome alterations, were not originally written as aseries; but they do, in fact, form one, inasmuchas the opinions put forward in each Paper werearrived at, one after the other, simply by followingone leading clue.
This clue was furnished by a consideration ofstatements made by Professor Sayce in an articlecontributed by him in 1874 to the Transactionsof the Society of Biblical Archæology.
At page 150 he thus wrote:—
“The standard astrological work of theBabylonians and Assyrians was one consisting ofseventy tablets, drawn up for the Library of Sargon,king of Agane, in the 16th century B.C.”
[viii]
And again at page 237:—
“The Accadian Calendar was arranged so asto suit the order of the Zodiacal signs; and Nisan,the first month, answered to the first Zodiacalsign. Now the sun still entered the first point ofAries at the vernal equinox in the time of Hipparkhus,and it would have done so since 2540B.C. From that epoch backwards to 4698 B.C.Taurus, the second sign of the Accadian Zodiac,and the second month of the Accadian year,would have introduced the spring. The precessionof the equinoxes thus enables us to fix the extremelimit of the antiquity of the ancient BabylonianCalendar, and of the origin of the Zodiacal signsin that country.”
Not many years after this sentence had beenpenned, archæologists, as the result of muchevidence, came to the firm conviction that thedate of Sargon of Agane was far earlier thanhad been at first supposed; and it was placed bythem, not “in the 16th century B.C.,” but at thehigh date of 3800 B.C.
It was in endeavouring to account for the choice[ix]by Accadian astronomers of Nisan as first monthof the year, and of Aries as first constellation ofthe Zodiac, at a date when that month and constellationcould not have “introduced the spring,”that a possible solution of the difficulty presenteditself to my mind—namely, the supposition thatthe Accadian calendar had been originated whenthe winter solstice, not the spring equinox,coincided with the sun’s entry into the constellationAries. This coincidence took place, asastronomy teaches us, at the date, in round numbers,of 6000 B.C.
In the first Paper here reprinted this suppositionwas put forward; and in the course of following, asabove stated, the clue afforded by it, the varioussu