d was
equivalent to the most recent and improved processes by which modern
astronomers deal with such motions."

Astronomy was probably born in Chaldaea as early as the time of Abraham.
The glories of the firmament were impressed upon the minds of the rude
primitive races with an intensity which we do not feel, with all the
triumphs of modern science. The Chaldaean shepherds, as they watched
their flocks by night, noted the movements of the planets, and gave
names to the more brilliant constellations. Before religious rituals
were established, before great superstitions arose, before poetry was
sung, before musical instruments were invented, before artists
sculptured marble or melted bronze, before coins were stamped, before
temples arose, before diseases were healed by the arts of medicine,
before commerce was known, those Oriental shepherds counted the anxious
hours by the position of certain constellations. Astronomy is therefore
the oldest of the ancient sciences, although it remained imperfect for
more than four thousand years. The old Assyrians, Egyptians, and Greeks
made but few discoveries which are valued by modern astronomers, but
they laid the foundation of the science, and ever regarded it as one of
the noblest subjects that could stimulate the faculties of man. It was
invested with all that was religious and poetical.

The spacious level and unclouded horizon of Chaldaea afforded peculiar
facilities of observation; and its pastoral and contemplative
inhabitants, uncontaminated by the vices and superstitions of subsequent
ages, active-minded and fresh, discovered after a long observation of
eclipses--some say extending over nineteen centuries--the cycle of two
hundred and twenty-three lunations, which brings back the eclipses in
the same order. Having once established their cycle, they laid the
foundation for the most sublime of all the sciences. Callisthenes
transmitted from Babylon to Aristotle a collection of observations of
all the eclipses that preceded the conquests of Alexander, together with
the definite knowledge which the Chaldaeans had collected about the
motions of the heavenly bodies. Such knowledge was rude and simple, and
amounted to little beyond the fact that there were spherical
revolutions about an inclined axis, and that the poles pointed always to
particular stars. The Egyptians also recorded their observations, from
which it would appear that they observed eclipses at least sixteen
hu