[88] François Lenormant, Les Bétyles (extracted from the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, p. 12):—"The cuneiform inscriptions mention the seven black stones worshipped in the principal temple of Urukh in Chaldæa, which personify the seven planets." In the same paper a vast number of facts are brought together which show how widely spread this worship was in Syria and Arabia, and with what persistence it maintained itself, at least until the preaching of Islamism. It would be easy to show that it still subsists in the popular superstitions. As to this worship among the Greeks, see also the paper by M. Heuzey, entitled, La Pierre sacrée d'Antibes (Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France, 1874, p. 99).
[89] Berosus, fragment 1. § 3. in the Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum of Ch. Müller, vol. ii. p. 496.
[90] Virgil, Bucolics, viii. 69. See in the edition of Benoist (Hatchette, 8vo, 1876) passages cited from Horace and Ovid, which prove that the superstition in question was then sufficiently widespread to enable poets to make use of it without too great a violation of probability.
[91] This was very clearly seen by the ancients. It could not be put better than by Cicero: "Principio Assyrii, propter planitiem magnitudinemque regionum quas incolebant, cum cælum ex omni parte patens et apertum intuerentur, trajectiones motusque stellarum observaverunt."—De Divinatione, i. 1, 2.
[92] "Chaldæi ... diuturnâ observatione siderum scientiam putantur effecisse, ut prædeci posset quid cuique eventurum et quo quisque fato natus esset."—Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 1, 2.
[93] This has been clearly shown by Laplace in the Précis de l'Histoire de l'Astronomie, which forms the fifth book of his Exposition du Système du Monde (fifth edition). He gives a résumé of what he believes to have been the chief results obtained by the Chaldæan astronomers (pp. 12-14 in the separate issue of the Précis 1821, 8vo). It would now, perhaps, be possible, thanks to recent discoveries, to give more precise and circumstantial details than those of Laplace.
[94] Aurès, Essai sur le Système métrique assyrien, p. 10 (in the Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, vol. iii. Vieweg, 4to, 1881). We refer those who are interested in these questions to this excellent paper, of which but the first part has as yet been published (1882). All previous works upon the subject are there quoted and discussed.
[95] "Sixty may be divided by any divisor of ten or twelve. Of all numbers that could be chosen as an invariable denominator for fractions, it has most divisors."—Fr. Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 177, third edition.
[96] Aurès, Sur le Système métrique assyrien, p. 16. A terra-cotta tablet, discovered in Lower Chaldæa among the ruins of Larsam, and believed with good reason to be very ancient, bears a list of the squares of the fractionary numbers between 160 2 and 6060 2, or 160, calculated with perfect accuracy (Lenormant, Manuel, &c. vol. ii. p. 37). See also Sayce, Babylonian Augury by means of Geometrical Figures, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iv. p. 302.
[97] Lenormant, Manuel, &c. vol. ii. p. 177, third edition.