years or months only. Indeed, by some ancient chronologers they have been considered as days only, the Chaldæan word JoMIN, and the Hebrew JAMIN, being affirmed to signify either years or days*. The more accurate investigations of the moderns have determined the Chaldæan saros to consist of a period of 223 complete lunations, forming the famous metonic cycle of 19 years, used by the Greeks; but by them undoubtedly borrowed from the Chaldæans. All that we know for any thing like certainty about the matter from antiquity is, that when Alexander conquered Babylon, the Chaldæan priests informed Callisthenes that they had recorded on BRICKScoctilibus laterculis inscriptas, bricks baked in the furnace, a circumstance deserving particular notice in this investigation-astronomical observations that extended back 1903 years before that period, or 330 years before Christ, when that conquest was achieved. This account Callisthenes dispatched from Babylon into Greece to his master and uncle Aristotle, who had requested him to make diligent inquiry upon the subject, and it has been transmitted down to us by Simplicius, who relates it on the authority of Porphyry†.

This statement, if credit may be given to it, carries us back to a period within so few years of the Flood, as plainly to designate the aforesaid Belus, who at that time flourished in Babylon, for the actual founder of the Chaldæan astronomy. The Egyptians, who boasted of Osiris, or Hermes, as the inventor of their astronomical system, and the vast golden circle of Osymandes, one cubit thick, and 365 cubits in circumference, and inscribed with astronomical observations, could not go higher than this æra, and the very early proficiency of both nations in the science in question can only be

**See Syncelli Chronologia, p. 32.

+ Vide Simplicius on Aristotle de Cælo, p. 123.

accounted for by the supposition that a considerable portion of the ante-diluvian arts and sciences, among which must be numbered astronomy, engraved on tablets, or treasured in the breasts of Noah and his offspring, was, by the permission of Providence, preserved to illumine the ignorance and darkness of the earliest post-diluvian ages. To suppose, indeed, that our ante-diluvian ancestors were indifferent to the study of that exalted science, which is the source of such sublime delight to many of their posterity; that for sixteen hundred years together they could be uninterested spectators of the celestial bodies, performing with undeviating regularity their vast revolutions; would be an insult to their memories, and to imagine them destitute of the passions and ardent curiosity natural to man. Though we may not give implicit credit to all that Josephus, in the vanity of aggrandizing the progenitors of the Jewish race, has narrated on this head, concerning the two pillars of Seth, the one of BRICK, the other of STONE, erected in the land of Siriad, and inscribed with the principles of ante-diluvian arts and sciences, the latter of which he asserts remained standing in his time*; yet, that he might have gleaned from the traditions of his nation some fragments of authentic information relative to their high advance in science, can hardly be disputed. Among these may be enumerated the grand cycle of 600 years, which he mentions to have been in use among that primitive race in their astronomical calculations. By this cycle of 600 years, Josephus is supposed to have meant the period wherein the sun and moon return to the same situation in the heavens in which they were at the commencement of that cycle; and a remark of the great astronomer Cassini upon it is highly deserving of notice. He ob

* Vide Josephi Antiq. Judaic. lib. i. cap. 3.

serves, that this grand period, of which no intimation is found in the remaining monuments of any other nation, is the finest period that ever was invented, since it brings out the solar year more exactly than that of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and the lunar month within about one second of what it is determined by modern astronomers. If, he adds, the ante-diluvians really had such a period of 600 years, they must have known the motions of the sun and moon more accurately than they were known some ages after the Flood. Of this there can be no doubt, since the observations of persons who lived eight or nine hundred years, and made by the same vigilant eye, could not fail of being less interrupted and less desultory than those made by men whose lives were contracted within a very small portion of that period, and whose observations were transmitted down through that lengthened term by means of successive observers. In the course of such a prolonged life, one diligent astronomer might have observed Saturn go through more than twenty of his revolutions; and knowledge, thus gradually advancing, might rapidly arrive at excellence little short of perfection*.

Leaving, however, Josephus and the ante-diluvians out of the question, Chaldæa being nearer to the spot where the ark rested, it is natural to suppose its inhabitants were, earliest of their post-diluvian brethren, occupied under a serene and beautiful sky, in exploring the paths and calculating the periods of the heavenly bodies. The diligent observation of the periods of their rising and setting was absolutely necessary to them in their agricultural pursuits, that they might know, for a certainty,

* Consult Long's Astronomy, vol. ii. p. 395, in which Cassini is quoted at length.

It was also important to them, in travelling over the vast sandy and level plains of their own country and Arabia, to have a celestial guide to direct their way over those pathless deserts, and to this use the constellations were probably applied long before the Phoenician mariner by their aid ploughed the more perilous ocean. Diodorus*, indeed, expressly affirms, that the southern part of Arabia being composed of sandy plains of immense extent, in journeying through them, travellers directed their course άò Tv Agxтwv, by the bears, in the same manner as navigators guide their vessels at sea. Edipus, also, in his fatal journey from Corinth to Thebes, says, he travelled on, exploring his way through unknown regions, by the stars.

τὴν Κορινθίαν

ΑΣΤΡΟΙΣ τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκμετρέμενος χθονα

Εφευγον.

ŒDIP. TYRANN. Act ii. line 795, edit. Brunck.

Of the precise æra at which astronomy was applied by the Phœnicians to navigation, it is impossible to speak. At the period when Solomon flourished, which was about one thousand years before Christ, they were already expert mariners, and assisted in navigating his vessels in their voyage to Ophir. In consequence of greater precision being necessary in marine than in land expeditions, they are supposed, in a very early age, but not easily to be ascertained, to have formed into a constellation the stars of the lesser bear, often called from them, PHONICE. The brilliant and steady light shed by the POLE STAR, which is situated in the centre of the arctic circle, was their unerring guide in their distant and dangerous voyages to

* Diodorus Sic. lib. i. p. 156, edit. Rhodoman.

the Cassiterides and other remote regions. But our concern is properly with the Chaldæans.

However dreary and inhospitable to travellers were the vast deserts above mentioned, those wide and open plains, affording an extensive and uninterrupted view of the horizon, especially when taken from such a stupendous elevation as the tower in question, were by those ancient astronomers esteemed the most eligible spots for making observations. In the infant state of that science, when as yet no regular calendar was formed, the length of the year not accurately ascertained, nor that year itself properly divided, it was only by strict attention to the rising and setting of certain constellations, as above intimated, that they discovered the proper seasons for cultivating the earth, in order that they might reap, in due time, its various and abundant produce. Conformably to this practice, Hesiod, the oldest writer on husbandry, recommends the husbandman to reap and plough by the rising and setting of the Pleiades, and to prune his vines by the rising of Arcturus*. In this innocent and primitive practice they were encouraged by the express declaration of holy writ, that the luminaries of heaven were appointed to them for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years, Gen. i. 14; and happy would it have been for mankind had they adhered to that simple practice, without a criminal deviation into forbidden paths. They were dazzled and deluded by their lustre and their beauty; and adored, instead of observing. They paid their devotions to the orb of created light, instead of the Source of light; they prostrated themselves before the sun, in the place of that Divine Being, who, as

* Hesiod, Opera et Dies, line 384.

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