In somewhat closer touch with popular notions and popular observances
were the names of the months. Confining ourselves to the later
names,--the forms in which they were transmitted during the period of
the Babylonian exile to the Jews,[836]--we find that the first month
which, as we shall see, was marked by sacred observances in the temples
of Marduk and Nabu at Babylon and Borsippa was designated
ideographically as 'the month of the sanctuary,' the third as the period
of 'brick-making,' the fifth as the 'fiery' month, the sixth as the
month of the 'mission of Ishtar'--a reference to the goddess' descent
into the region of darkness. Designations like 'taking (_i.e._,
scattering) seed' for the fourth month, 'copious fertility' for the
ninth month, 'grain-cutting' period for the twelfth, and 'opening of
dams'[837] for the eighth contain distinct references to agriculture.
The name 'destructive rain' for the eleventh month is suggested by
climatic conditions. Still obscure is the designation of the seventh
month as the month of the 'resplendent mound,'[838] and so also is the
designation of the second month.[839]

The calendar is thus shown to be the product of the same general order
of religious ideas that we have detected in the zodiacal and planetary
systems. Its growth must have been gradual, for its composite character
is one of its most striking features. The task was no easy one to bring
the lunar year into proper conjunction with the solar year, and there
are grounds for believing that prior to the division of the year into
twelve parts, there was a year of ten months corresponding to a simpler,
perhaps a decimal, system, which appears to have preceded the elaborate
sexagesimal system.[840]

However this may be, the point of importance for our purposes is to
detect the extension of religious ideas into the domain of science, and,
on the other hand, to note the reaction of scientific theories on the
development of religious thought. The cosmology of the Babylonians
results from the continued play of these two factors. Hence the strange
mixture of popular notions and fancies with comparatively advanced
theological speculations and still more advanced scientific theories
that is found in the cosmological system. Even mysticism is given a
scientific aspect in Babylonia. The identification of the gods with the
stars arises, as we have seen, from a scientific impulse, and it is a
scientific spirit again that leads t