As remotely as B. C. 3000, the sun-god Shamash and his wife Aya are carved upon the historic cylinders of hematite and lapis lazuli, and one of the oldest designs on these cylinders represents the sun-god coming out of the Door of Sunrise, while a porter is opening the Gate of the East. The Semitic religion had as its basis a reverence for the bodies of the sky; and Samson, Hebrew for sun, was probably the sun-god of the Hebrews. The Phœnician deity, Baal, was a sun-god under differing designations; and at the epoch of the Shepherd Kings, about B. C. 1500, during the Hyksos dynasty, the sun-god was represented by a circle or disk with extended rays ending in hands, possibly the precursor of the frequently recurring Egyptian design of the winged disk or winged solar globe. Hittites, Persians, and Assyrians, as well as the Phœnicians, frequently represented the sun-god in similar fashion in their sacred glyphs or carvings.
For a long period in early human history, astronomy and astrology were pretty much the same. We can trace the history of astrology back as far as B. C. 3000 in ancient Babylonia. The motions of the sun, moon, and the five lucid planets of that time indicated the activity of the various gods who influenced human affairs. So the Babylonian priests devised an elaborate system of interpreting the phenomena of the heavens; and attaching the proper significance in human terms to everything that took place in the sky. In Babylonia and Assyria it was the king and his people for whom the prognostications were made out. It was the same in Egypt. Later, about the fifth century B. C., astrology spread through Greece, where astrologers developed the idea of the influence of planets upon individual concerns. Astrology persisted through the Dark Ages, and the great astronomers Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, Gassendi, and Huygens were all astrologers as well. Milton makes many references to planetary influence, our language has many words with a direct origin in astrology, and in our great cities to-day are many astrologers who prepare individual horoscopes of more than ordinary interest.
It is difficult to assign the antiquity of the Chinese astronomy with any approach to definiteness. Their earliest records appear to have been total eclipses of the sun, going back nearly 2,200 years before the Christian era; and nearly a thousand years earlier the Hindu astronomy sets down a conjunction of all the planets, concerning which, however, there is doubt whether it was actually observed or merely calculated backward. Owing to a colossal misfortune, the burning of all native scientific books by order of the Emperor Tsin-Chi-Hwang-Ti, in B. C. 221, excepting only the volumes relating to agriculture, medicine, and astrology, the Chinese lost a precious mass of astronomical learning, accumulated through the ages. No less an authority than Wells Williams credits them with observing 600 solar eclipses between B. C. 2159 and A. D. 1223, and there must have been some centuries of eclipses observed and recorded anterior to B. C. 2159, as this is the date assigned to the eclipse which came unheralded by the astronomers royal, Hi and Ho, who had become intoxicated and forgot to warn the Court, in accord with their duty. China was thereby exposed to the anger of the gods, and Hi and Ho were executed by his Majesty's command. It is doubtful if there is an earlier record of any celestial phenomenon.
CHAPTER III
PYRAMID, TOMB, AND TEMPLE
Inquiry into the beginnings of astronomy in ancient Egypt reveals most interesting relations of the origins of the science to the life and work and worship of the people. Their astronomers were called the "mystery teachers of heaven"; their monuments indicate a civilization more or less advanced; and their temples were built on astronomical principles and dedicated to purpose of worship. The Egyptian records carry us back many thousands of years, and we find that in Egypt, as in other early civilizations, observation of the heavenly bodies may be embraced in three pretty distinct stages. Awe, fear, wonder and worship were the first. Then came utility: a calendar was necessary to tell men when "to plow and sow, to reap and mow," and a calendar necessitated astronomical observations of some sort. Following this, the third direction required observations of celestial positions and phenomena also, because astrology, in which the potentates of every ancient realm believed, could only thrive as it was based on astronomy.
Sun worship was preeminent in early Egypt as in India, where the primal antithesis between night and day struck terror in the unformed mind of man. In one of the Vedas occurs this significant song to the god of day: "Will the Sun rise again? Will our old friend the Dawn come back again? Will the power of Darkness be conquered by the God of Light?"
Quite different from India, however, is Egypt in matters of record: in India, records in papyrus, but no monuments of very great antiquity; in Egypt, no papyrus, but monuments of exceeding antiquity in abundance. Herodotus and Pliny have told us of the great antiquity of these monuments, even in their own day, and research by archæologist and astronomer has made it certain that the pyramids were built by a race possessing great knowledge of astronomy. Their temples, too, were constructed in strict relation to stars. Not only are the temples, as Edfu and Denderah, of exceeding interest in themselves, but associated with them are often huge monoliths of syenite, obelisks of many hundred tons in weight, which the astronomer recognizes as having served as observation pillars or gnomons. Specimens of these have wandered as far from home as Central Park and the bank of the Thames. But there is an even more remarkable wealth of temple inscriptions, zodiacs especially.
Next to the sun himself was the worship of the Dawn and Sunrise, the great revelations of nature. There were numerous hymns to the still more numerous sun-gods and the powers of sunlight. Ra was the sun-god in his noontide strength; Osiris, the dying sun of sunset. Only two gods were associated with the moon, and for the stars a special goddess, Sesheta. Sacrifices were made at day-break; and the stars that heralded the dawn were the subjects of careful observation by the sacrificial priests, who must therefore have possessed a good knowledge of star places and names, doubtless in belts of stars extending clear around the heavens. These decans, as they were called, are the exact counterparts of the moon stations devised by the Arabians, Indians, and other peoples for a like purpose.