lag das Paradies_, p. 7 (_Ueber Land und Meer_,
1894-95, no. 15, Sonderabdruck), who furnishes numerous illustrations of
the indefinite geographical notions of the ancients.

[791] The group of celestial beings.

[792] _I.e._, Marduk.

[793] Read _a-ma-mi_.

[794] Zimmern purposes to connect this line with the preceding, but the
sense in that case is not at all clear.

[795] _I.e._, with Marduk.

[796] Haupt's edition, p. 8, l. 34.

[797] See above, p. 437.

[798] Haupt, _ib._ p. 139, l. 116.

[799] _Ib._ l. 111.

[800] _Kosmologie_, p. 294, note 1.

[801] See p. 82.

[802] _Zerbanitum_, as though compounded of _zer_ (seed), and _bani_
(create). See p. 121.

[803] Gen. i. 1-ii. 4, embodied in the "Priestly Code."

[804] Gen. ii. 4 and extending in reality as far as iv. 25.

[805] Gen. iii. 17.

[806] See Gunkel, _Schoepfung und Chaos_, p. 13.

[807] On the acquaintance of Hebrew writers of the Babylonian exile with
cuneiform literature and on the influence exercised by the latter, see
D. H. Mueller, _Ezechielstudien_.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE ZODIACAL SYSTEM OF THE BABYLONIANS.

Planets, Stars, and Calendar.

It will be appropriate at this point, to give a brief account of the
astronomical system as developed by the Babylonian scholars. The system
forms a part of the Babylonian cosmology. The 'creation' narratives we
have been considering are based upon the system, and the omen literature
is full of allusions to it. Moreover, the understanding of some of the
purely religious doctrines of the Babylonians is dependent upon a proper
conception of the curious astrological speculations which from Babylonia
made their way to the Greeks, and have left their traces in the
astronomy of the present time.

The stars were regarded by the Babylonians as pictorial designs on the
heavens. A conception of this kind is the outcome of popular fancy, and
has its parallel among other nations of antiquity. We pass beyond the
popular stage, however, when we find the stars described as the 'writing
of heaven.'[808] Such a term is the product of the schools, and finds a
ready explanation if we remember that the cuneiform script, like other
scripts, was in its first stages pictorial. The Babylonian scholars not
only knew this, but so well did they know it that writing continued to
be regarded by them as picture drawing. The characters used by them were
'likenesses'[809] long after they had passed beyond the sta