Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/842

Rh 792 ZODIAC apotheosis of Augustus. Libra was not of Greek inven tion. Ptolemy, who himself chiefly used the &quot;Claws&quot; (Xr/Aai), speaks of it as a distinctively Chaldsean sign; 1 and it occurs as an extra-zodiacal asterism in the Chinese sphere. An ancient Chinese law, moreover, prescribed the regu- larization of weights and measures at the spring equinox. 2 No representation of the seventh sign has yet been dis covered on any Euphratean monument ; but it is noticeable that the eighth is frequently doubled, 3 and it is difficult to avoid seeing in the pair of zodiacal scorpions carved on Assyrian cylinders the prototype of the Greek scorpion and claws. Both Libra and the sign it eventually super seded thus owned a Chaldaean birthplace. The struggle of rival systems of nomenclature, from which our zodiacal series resulted, is plainly visible in their alternations ; and the claims of the competing signs were long sought to be conciliated by representing the Balance as held between the claws of the Scorpion. Ninth to The definitive decline of the sun s power after the twelfth autumnal equinox was typified by placing a Scorpion as lgn the symbol of darkness in the eighth sign. Sagittarius, figured later as a Centaur, stood for the Babylonian Mars. Capricornus, the sign of the winter solstice, is plausibly connected with the caprine nurse of the young solar god in Oriental legends, of which that of Zeus and Amalthea is a variant. 4 The fish-tailed Goat of the zodiac presents a close analogy with the Mexican calendar sign Cipactli, a kind of marine monster resembling a narwhal. 5 Aquarius is a still more exclusively meteorological sign than Leo. The eleventh month was known in Euphratean regions as that of &quot; want and rain.&quot; The deluge was traditionally associated with it. It was represented in zodiacal sym bolism by the god Ramman, crowned with a tiara and pouring water from a vase, or more generally by the vase and water without the god. The resumption of agricul tural labours after the deluge was commemorated in the twelfth month, and a mystical association of the fishes, which were its sign, with the life after death is evident in a monument of Assyrian origin described by M. Cler- mont-Ganneau, showing a corpse guarded by a pair of fish-gods. 6 The doubling of the sign of Pisces still recalls, according to Mr Sayce, 7 the arrangement of the Baby lonian calendar, in which a year of 360 days was sup plemented once in six years by a thirteenth month, a second Adar. To the double month corresponded the double sign of the &quot; Fishes of Hea.&quot; 8 Cyclical The cyclical meaning of the succession of zodiacal signs, meaning though now obscured by interpolations and substitutions, succes- was probably once clear and entire. It is curiously re- sion of fleeted in the adventures of the Babylonian Hercules, the .signs. solar hero Izdubar. 9 They were recorded in the compara tively late surviving version of the 7th century B.C., on twelve tablets, with an obvious design of correlation with the twelve divisions of the sun s annual course. Izdubar s conquest of the winged bull Heabani was placed under Taurus ; his slaying of the tyrant Houmbaba (the prototype of Geryon) in the fifth month typified the victory of light over darkness, represented in plastic art by the group of a lion killing a bull, which is the form ordinarily given to the 1 In citing a Chaldrean observation of Mercury dating from 235 B.C. (Almagest, vol. ii. p. 170, ed. Halma). 2 See Uranographie Chinoise, by Gustav Schlegel, who, however, claims an extravagant antiquity for the Chinese constellational system. 3 Lenormant, Origines, vol. i. p. 267. 4 Ibid., p. 259. 6 Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleras, 1810, p. 157. 6 Rev. ArcheoL, 1879, p. 344. 7 Trans. Soc. Bill. Archseol., vol. iii. p. 166. 8 The god Hea, the Cannes of Berosus, equivalent to the fish-god Dagon, came to the rescue of the protagonist in the Chaldajan drama of the deluge. 9 Sir H. Rawlinson, Athenaeum, 7th December 1872. sign Leo on Ninevite cylinders. 10 The wooing of Ishtar by the hero of the epic falls under Virgo, and his encounter with two scorpion men, guardians of the rising and the setting sun, under Scorpio. The eleventh tablet narrates the deluge ; the twelfth associates the apotheosis of Hea bani (the Babylonian Chiron) with the zodiacal emblems of the resurrection. In the formation of the constellations of the zodiac The con- very little regard was paid to stellar configurations. The stella Chaldseans chose three stars in each sign to be the &quot; coun- tlollSi cillor gods &quot; of the planets. 11 These were called by the Greeks &quot;decans,&quot; because ten degrees of the ecliptic and ten days of the year were presided over by each. The college of the decans was conceived as moving, by their annual risings and settings, in an &quot;eternal circuit&quot; between the infernal and supernal regions. Our modern asterisms first appear in the Phenomena of Eudoxus about 370 B.C. But Eudoxus, there is reason to believe, consulted, not the heavens, but a celestial globe of an anterior epoch, on which the stars and the signs were forced into unnatural agreement. The representation thus handed down to us (in the verses of Aratus) has been thought to tally best with the state of the sky about 2000 B.C.; 12 and the men tion of a pole-star, for which Eudoxus was rebuked by Hipparchus, seems, as Mr W. T. Lynn has pointed out, 13 to refer to the time when a Draconis stood near the pole. The data afforded by Eudoxus, however, are far too vague to serve as the basis of any chronological conclusion. The Egyptians adopted from the Greeks, with consider- Egyptian able modifications of its attendant symbolism, the twelve- zodiacal fold division of the zodiac. Aries became the Fleece; two Slgns- Sprouting Plants, typifying equality or resemblance, stood for Gemini ; Cancer was re-named Scarabaeus ; Leo was converted, from the axe-like configuration of its chief stars, into the Knife; Libra into the Mountain of the Sun, a reminiscence, apparently, of the Euphratean association of the seventh month with a &quot;holy mound,&quot; designating the Biblical tower of Babel. A Serpent was the Egyptian equivalent of Scorpio ; the Arrow only of Sagittarius was retained ; Capricornus became &quot; Life,&quot; or a Mirror as an image of life; Aquarius survived as Water; Taurus, Virgo, and Pisces remained unchanged. 14 The motive of some of the substitutions was to avoid the confusion which must have ensued from the duplication of previously existing native asterisms ; thus, the Egyptian and Greek Lions were composed of totally different stars. Abstractions in other cases replaced concrete objects, with the general result of effacing the distinctive character of the Greek zodiac as a &quot; circle of living things.&quot; Early Zoroastrian writings, though impregnated with Spread star-worship, show no traces of an attempt to organize of Greek the heavenly array. In the Bundehish, however (9th svstem&amp;gt; century), the twelve &quot;Akhtars,&quot; designated by the same names as our signs, lead the army of Ormuzd, while the seven &quot; Awakhtars &quot; or planets (including a meteor and a comet) fight for Ahriman. The knowledge of the solar zodiac thus turned to account for dualistic purposes was undoubtedly derived from the Greeks. By them, too, it was introduced into Hindustan. Aryabhata, about the beginning of our era, reckoned by the same signs as Hip parchus. They were transmitted from India by Buddhist missionaries to China, but remained in abeyance until the Jesuit reform of Chinese astronomy in the 17th century. The native zodiacal system was of unexampled complex ity. Besides divisions into twenty-eight and twenty-four 10 Lenormant, Origines, vol. i. p. 240. 11 Diod. Sic., Hist., ii. 30, where, however, by an obvious mistake the number of &quot;councillor gods &quot; is stated at only thirty. 12 R. Brown, Babylonian Record, No. 3, p. 34. 13 Babylonian Record, No. 5, p. 79. 14 Brugsch, Z. D. M. G ., vol. ix. p. 513.