onians could not give the name
of "Fool" to the representation in the sky of their supreme deity, the
Hebrews and the Babylonians regarded the constellation in different
ways. Several Assyriologists consider that the constellations, _Orion_
and _Cetus_, represent the struggle between Merodach and Tiamat, and
this conjecture is probably correct, so far as Babylonian ideas of the
constellations are concerned, for Tiamat is expressly identified on a
Babylonian tablet with a constellation near the ecliptic.[241:1] But
this means that the myth originated in the star figures, and was the
Babylonian interpretation of them. In this case, Cetus--that is
Tiamat--must have been considered as a goddess, and as directly and
immediately the ancestress of all the gods. Orion--Merodach--must have
been likewise a god, the great-great-grandson of Tiamat, whom he
destroys.

The Hebrew conception was altogether different. Neither Merodach, nor
Tiamat, nor the constellations of Orion and Cetus, nor the actual stars
of which they are composed, are anything but creatures. Jehovah has made
Orion, as well as the "Seven Stars," as "His hand hath formed the
crooked serpent." By the mouth of Isaiah He says, "I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord, do all these
things." The Babylonian view was of two divinities pitted against each
other, and the evil divinity was the original and the originator of the
good. In the Hebrew view, even the powers of evil are created things;
they are not self-existent.

And the Hebrews took a different view from the Babylonians of the story
told by these constellations. The Hebrews always coupled Orion with the
Pleiades; the Babylonians coupled Orion with Cetus--that is, Merodach
with Tiamat.

The view that has come down to us through the Greeks agrees much better
with the association of the constellations as held amongst the Hebrews,
rather than amongst the Babylonians. The Hunter Orion, according to the
Greeks, chased the Pleiades--the little company of Seven Virgins, or
Seven Doves--and he was confronted by the Bull. In their view, too, the
Sea-monster was not warring against Orion, but against the chained
woman, Andromeda.

FOOTNOTES:

[234:1] But the fact that Napoleon's name was thus coupled with this
constellation does not warrant us in asserting that Napoleon had no
historical existence, and that his long contest with the great sea-power
(England), with its capi