lved nothing short of a revolution in astronomy, but the Babylonian
Creation story implies that this revolution had already taken place
when it was composed, and that the equal division of the zodiac was
already in force. It is possible that the sixth and seventh lines of the
poem indicate that the Babylonians had already noticed a peculiar fact,
viz. that just as the moon passes through all the signs in a month,
whilst the sun passes through only one sign in that time; so the sun
passes through all the signs in a year, whilst Jupiter passes through
but one sign. _Nibir_ was the special Babylonian name of the planet
Jupiter when on the meridian; and Merodach, as the deity of that planet,
is thus represented as pacing out the bounds of the zodiacal Signs by
his movement in the course of the year. The planet also marks out the
third part of a sign, _i. e._ ten degrees; for during one-third of each
year it appears to retrograde, moving from east to west amongst the
stars instead of from west to east. During this retrogression it covers
the breadth of one "decan" = ten degrees.

[Illustration: POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, A.D. 1900.]

The Babylonian Creation epic is therefore quite late, for it introduces
astronomical ideas not current earlier than 700 B.C. in Babylonia or
anywhere else. This new development of astronomy enables us also to
roughly date the origin of the different orders of systematic astrology.

Astrology, like astronomy, has passed through successive stages. It
began at zero. An unexpected event in the heavens was accounted
portentous, because it was unexpected, and it was interpreted in a good
or bad sense according to the state of mind of the beholder. There can
have been at first no system, no order, no linking up of one specific
kind of prediction with one kind of astronomical event. It can have been
originally nothing but a crude jumble of omens, just on a level with the
superstitions of some of our peasantry as to seeing hares, or cats, or
magpies; and the earliest astrological tablets from Mesopotamia are
precisely of this character.

But the official fortune-tellers at the courts of the kings of Nineveh
or Babylon must speedily have learned the necessity of arranging some
systems of prediction for their own protection--systems definite enough
to give the astrologer a groundwork for a prediction which he could
claim was dependent simply upon the heavenly bodies, and hence for which
the astrologer