Now, do we get any Babylonian connection so far as we have gone?
We learn, to begin with, from Pierret[138] that the hippopotamus, the emblem of Set and Typhon, was the hieroglyph of the Babylonian god "Baal."
Do we get the jackal constellation in Babylonian astronomy? Of this there is no question, and in early times. Jensen refers[139] to the various readings "jackal" and "leopard," and states that it is only doubtful whether by this figure the god Anu or the pole of the ecliptic Anu is meant. Either will certainly serve our present purpose, and a leopard in Babylonia might as easily symbolise the night as a jackal in Northern Egypt.
There seems little doubt that the jackal, leopard, hyæna, black pig (wild boar), and hippopotamus were chosen as the representatives of the god of evil and darkness (associated with the circumpolar constellations), on account of their ravages on flocks and herds and crops. If this be agreed, nothing is more proper than that the jackal should be associated with North Egypt, the hippopotamus with South Egypt, and the wild boar with a latitude to the north of Egypt (and perhaps of Nineveh) altogether. The representative of the god of darkness, then, depended upon the latitude. In this connection I may state that Drs. Sclater and Salvin have quite recently referred me to an interesting paper by the late Mr. Tomes[140] on the habit of the hippopotamus when it comes out of the water to exude a blood-coloured fluid from special pores in its skin. This explains at once why Typhon took the form of a red hippopotamus, and why Mr. Irving, on the modern stage, couples Mephistopheles, the modern devil, with red fire.
I know not whether the similarity in the words Anu, Annu and An results merely from a coincidence, but it is certainly singular that the most ancient temples in Lower Egypt (Heliopolis and Denderah) should be called Annu or An[141] if there be no connection with the Babylonian god Anu.
With regard to Anubis, it is quite certain that the seven stars in Ursa Minor make a very good jackal with pendent tail, as generally represented by the Egyptians (see page 276), and that they form the nearest compact constellation to the pole of the ecliptic.
The worship of Anubis as god of the dead, or the night god, whether associated with the Babylonian Anu or not, was supreme till the time of Men-Kau-Rā, the builder of the third pyramid of Gîzeh[142] (3633 B.C., Brugsch; 4100 B.C., Mariette). Osiris is not mentioned. The coffin-lid of this king with the prayer to Osiris "marks a new religious development in the annals of Egypt. The absorption of the justified soul in Osiris, the cardinal doctrine of the Ritual of the Dead, makes its appearance here for the first time."
It seems extremely probable, therefore, that the worship of the circumpolar stars went on in Babylonia as well as in Egypt in the earliest times we can get at.
A very wonderful thing it is that, apparently in very early times, the Babylonians had made out the pole of the equator as contradistinguished from the pole of the ecliptic. This they called Bīl. With this Jensen finds no star associated,[143] but 6000 B.C. this pole would be not far removed from those stars in the present constellation Draco, out of which I have suggested that the old Egyptian asterism of the hippopotamus was formed.
Nor was this all; movements in relation to the ecliptic had been differentiated from movements in relation to the equator. We have inscriptions running:—