[984] See Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (London, 1912), pp. 135 ff.
[985] From Astronomy many Assyrian dates have been ascertained. Kugler by stellar researches has settled the vexed question of the date of Hammurabi, and probably that of Abram, at about 2120 b.c., which unites within one year the latest conclusions of King, Jastrow, and Rogers, and so establishes an important degree of accord among Assyriologists on events subsequent to 2200 b.c. as regards which they have hitherto been wide apart. Then again modern astronomers have worked out that there was a total eclipse of the sun at Nineveh on June 15, 763 b.c. The importance of the fixing of this date can as regards Assyrian chronology hardly be exaggerated. The Assyrians, rejecting the Babylonian system of counting time, invented a system of their own, by naming the year after certain officers or terms of office, not unlike the system of the Archonates at Athens, and the Consulates at Rome. These were termed limus: a list of these functionaries during four centuries has come down to us. In the time of one of them, Pur Sagali, there is a mention of the eclipse of the sun. As this eclipse has now been fixed for the year 763 b.c., we possess an automatic date for every year after of the limus.
[986] Apollo to the Greeks was at once archer-god and god of divination. The word ἀγεῖλε, “he gave as his oracular response,” means literally “he picked up” (the arrows). Indeed the curious fact that λέγω in Greek denotes “I say” and in Latin “I read” is best explained by O. Schrader, who points out that it meant originally “I pick up” or “collect” (the arrows of divination) and so both read and declare the will of heaven. See O. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, trans. F. B. Jevons (London, 1890), p. 279.
[987] Koran, Sur. v. 92.
[988] Proverbs, vii. 23.
[989] See, e.g. C. Thulin, Die Götter des Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza, Gieszen, 1906.
[990] Ency. Bibl., p. 1118.
[991] According to Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (op. cit.), p. 47, “Ninâ, a water deity, was identified at an early date with the constellation, Scorpio; for this reason her brother Ningirsu, also a water deity, was identified with one of the stars of Scorpio.”
[992] The Biru or Kasbu represented the distance walked by an ordinary man in one Sumerian hour, which, as they divided their whole day into twelve, equals two of our hours. The prehistoric Sumerians, like other nations, reckoned the year by the Moon, not by the Sun. The historic calendar-makers endeavoured to bridge the hiatus and correlate the solar with the lunar year by inserting an intercalary month. They combined the decimal and the sexagesimal in their scheme of numbers—hence, though curiously, their multiplication was always by six, not ten. Cf. W. Zimmern, Zeit und Raumrechnung, who instances the twelve—6 × 2—signs of the Zodiac, etc.
[993] Aquarius.