Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/92

 72 A HISTORY OF ART IN CHALD/EA AND ASSYRIA. existence of the astronomical tablets, and those Epigenes himself saw. The library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh included catalogues of stellary and planetary observations, among others the times of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, and the phases of the moon, for every day in the month. 1 Tablets have also been recently discovered pavingf the arrangement of the stars in the sky for each o o o J season and explaining the rule to be followed in the insertion of the intercalary months. Finally, a fragment of an Assyrian planisphere has been found in the palace of Sennacherib. 2 Even if classic authors had been silent on the subject, and all the original documents had disappeared, we might have divined from the appearance of the figured monuments alone, how greatly the Chaldseans honoured the stars and how much study and research they devoted to them ; we might have guessed that they lived with their eyes fixed upon the firmament and upon the sources of light. Look at the steles that bear royal effigies, at the representations upon contracts and other documents of that kind (see Fig. 10), at the cylindrical or conical seals which have gravitated in thousands into our museums (Figs, n and 12) ; you will see a personage adoring a star, still oftener you will find the sun's disk and the crescent moon figured upon the field, with, perhaps, one or several stars. These images are only omitted upon reliefs that are purely narrative and historical, like most of those in the Assyrian palaces. Everywhere else, upon every object and in every scene having a religious and sacred character, a place is reserved for the symbols in question, if we may call them so. Their presence is evidence of the homage rendered by the Chaldaeans to the stars, and of the faith they placed in their supposed revelations. Further evidence to the same effect is given by the ancient writing, in which the ideogram for king was a star. " The imaginations of the Egyptians were mainly impressed by the daily and annual circlings of the sun. In that body they saw the most imposing manifestation of the Deity and the clearest exemplification of the laws that govern the world ; to it, therefore they turned for their personifications of the divine power." 3 The attention of the Chaldseans, on the other hand, was not so absorbed, and, so to speak, lost, in the contemplation of -a single star, 1 LENORMANT, Manuel, &c. vol. ii. p. 175. 2 G. SMITH, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 407. 3 LENORMANT, Manuel, &c. vol. ii, p. 181.