We may form some idea of what this “representation of the heavens” was from the fifth “Creation Tablet,” now in the British Museum. It reads as follows:—
“Anu [the Creator] made excellent the mansions [i.e. the celestial houses] of the great gods [twelve] in number [i.e. the twelve signs or mansions of the sun].
The stars he placed in them. The lumasi [i.e. groups of stars or figures] he fixed.
He arranged the year according to the bounds [i.e. the twelve signs] which he defined.
For each of the twelve months three rows of stars [i.e. constellations] he fixed.
From the day when the year issues forth unto the close, he marked the mansions [i.e. the Zodiacal Signs] of the wandering stars [i.e. planets] to know their courses that they might not err or deflect at all.”
Coming down to less ancient records: Eudoxos, an astronomer of Cnidus (403 to 350 b.c.), wrote a work on Astronomy which he called Phainomena. Antigonus Gonatas, King of Macedonia (273-239 b.c.), requested the Poet Aratus to put the work of Eudoxus into the form of a poem, which he did about the year 270 b.c. Aratus called his work Diosemeia (the Divine Signs). He was a native of Tarsus, and it is interesting for us to note that his poem was known to, and, indeed, must have been read by, the Apostle Paul, for he quotes it in his address at Athens on Mars' Hill. He says (Acts xvii. 28), “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”[16] Several translations of this poem have been made, both by Cicero and others, into Latin, and in recent times into English by E. Poste, J. Lamb, and others. The following is the opening from the translation of Robert Brown, jun.:—
“From Zeus we lead the strain; he whom mankind
Ne'er leave unhymned: of Zeus all public ways,
All haunts of men, are full; and full the sea,