[12] Origine de tous les cultes, ou Religion universelle, by C. F. Dupuis.
[13] Journal of the British Astronomical Association, “The Oldest Astronomy,” July 1898, June 1899, April 1904 May 1909; The Observatory, December 1898; Knowledge, October 1904; and elsewhere.
[14] The Phainomena of Aratos, by Robert Brown. See also his Eridanus, River and Constellation; Primitive Constellations, and other works.
[15] We are not sure what limits Aratus intended to set in the south to Centaur and Argo, and notably to the River Eridanus, which used to flow beneath the Sea-Monster (Cetus), joining the Water poured out by Aquarius. It changed its bed (like the Euphrates, of which it is perhaps the heavenly counterpart), and now has left the Sea-Monster high and dry, while on its ancient banks a chemist’s furnace and a sculptor’s workshop have been set up.
The Celestial Equator of Aratus fails to agree with the Equator of b.c. 2084, not only in passing over the head of Orion, instead of through his belt, as Brown himself points out, but also in running through the eye of the Bull, instead of his “crouching legs alone,” so this part is altogether too far north. The Equator some 1200 years later agreed better here, and equally well elsewhere, except in the opposite part of the sky where it was then too northerly for Aratus, leaving Corvus to the south of the line. Much the same may be said about the tropical circles. Either Aratus was careless, or the globe from which he took his descriptions was incorrect: in any case, there results an uncertainty of many centuries and many degrees in date and latitude.
[16] Epping and Strassmeier, Astronomisches aus Babylon, Kugler’s Babylonische Mondrechnung, and Babylonische Sternkunde. Schiaparelli’s two monographs on Babylonian Astronomy, from which much of the information here given is derived, are chiefly based on these works.
[17] King, History of Sumer and Akkad, p. 246.
[18] Schiaparelli, L’ Astronomia nell’ Antico Testamento, chap. vii.; Wellhausen, History of Israel, chap. iii.
[19] Sayce and Bosanquet identify Dilgan with Capella, not with part of Aries, and consider that a date of about b.c. 2000 is indicated—(Monthly Notices xxxix, 454). But in any case the method of calendar formation is the same.
[20] Sayce and Bosanquet understand Capella here also.