for
purposes of augury. The heavens were mapped out, and the courses of
the heavenly bodies traced to determine the bearing of their movements
upon human destinies."[348]

Several centuries before Hipparchus was born, the Assyrian kings had
in their palaces official astronomers who were able to foretell, with
varying degrees of accuracy, when eclipses would take place.
Instructions were sent to various observatories, in the king's name,
to send in reports of forthcoming eclipses. A translation of one of
these official documents sent from the observatory of Babylon to
Nineveh, has been published by Professor Harper. The following are
extracts from it: "As for the eclipse of the moon about which the king
my lord has written to me, a watch was kept for it in the cities of
Akkad, Borsippa, and Nippur. We observed it ourselves in the city of
Akkad.... And whereas the king my lord ordered me to observe also the
eclipse of the sun, I watched to see whether it took place or not, and
what passed before my eyes I now report to the king my lord. It was an
eclipse of the moon that took place.... It was total over Syria, and
the shadow fell on the land of the Amorites, the land of the Hittites,
and in part on the land of the Chaldees." Professor Sayce comments:
"We gather from this letter that there were no less than three
observatories in Northern Babylonia: one at Akkad, near Sippara; one
at Nippur, now Niffer; and one at Borsippa, within sight of Babylon.
As Borsippa possessed a university, it was natural that one of the
three observatories should be established there."[349]

It is evident that before the astronomers at Nineveh could foretell
eclipses, they had achieved considerable progress as scientists. The
data at their disposal probably covered nearly two thousand years. Mr.
Brown, junior, calculates that the signs of the Zodiac were fixed in
the year 2084 B.C.[350] These star groups do not now occupy the
positions in which they were observed by the early astronomers,
because the revolving earth is rocking like a top, with the result
that the pole does not always keep pointing at the same spot in the
heavens. Each year the meeting-place of the imaginary lines of the
ecliptic and equator is moving westward at the rate of about fifty
seconds. In time--ages hence--the pole will circle round to the point
it spun at when the constellations were named by the Babylonians. It
is by calculating the period occupied by this world-cu