Hipparchus lived in Asia Minor

Hipparchus, who lived in Asia Minor in the 2nd century BC, discussed “the displacement of the sostitial and equinoctial sign,” the phenomenon now called precession of the equinoxes.

But the phenomenon can be explained only in terms of a “spherical astronomy,” whereby Earth is surrounded by the other celestial bodies as a sphere within a spherical universe.

Did Hipparchus, then, know that Earth was a globe, and did he make his calculations in terms of a spherical astronomy?

Equally important is yet another question. The phenomenon of the precession could be observed by relating the arrival of spring to the Sun’s position (as seen from Earth) in a given zodiacal constellation.

But the shift from one zodiacal house to another requires 2,160 years.

Hipparchus certainly could not have lived long enough to make that astronomical observation. Where, then, did he obtain his information?

Eudoxus of Cnidus, another Greek mathematician and astronomer who lived in Asia Minor two centuries before Hipparchus, designed a celestial sphere, a copy of which was set up in Rome as a statue of Atlas supporting the world. The designs on the sphere represent the zodiacal constellations. But if Eudoxus conceived the heavens as a sphere, where in relation to the heavens was Earth?

Did he think that the celestial globe rested on a fiat Earth—a most awkward arrangement—or did he know of a spherical Earth, enveloped by a celestial sphere? (Fig. 91)

The works of Eudoxus, lost in their originals, have come down to us thanks to the poems of Aratus, who in the third century B.C. “translated” the facts put forth by the astronomer into poetic language. In this poem (which must have been familiar to St. Paul, who quoted from it) the constellations are described in great detail, “drawn all around”; and their grouping and naming is ascribed to a very remote prior age. “Some men of yore a nomenclature thought of and devised, and appropriate forms found.”

Who were the “men of yore” to whom Eudoxus attributed the designation of the constellations? Based on certain clues in the poem, modern astronomers believe that the Greek verses describe the heavens as they were observed in Mesopotamia circa 2200 B.C.

Both Hipparchus and Eudoxus lived in Asia Minor. This raises the probability that they drew their knowledge from Hittite sources.

Perhaps they even visited the Hittite capital and viewed the divine procession carved on the rocks there; for among the marching gods two bull-men hold up a globe—a sight that might well have inspired Eudoxus to sculpt Atlas and the celestial sphere. (Fig. 92)

Were the earlier Greek astronomers, living in Asia Minor, better informed than their successors because they could draw on Mesopotamian sources?

Hipparchus, in fact, confirmed in his writings that his studies were based on knowledge accumulated and verified over many millennia. He named as his mentors “Babylonian astronomers of Erech, Borsippa, and Babylon.” Geminus of Rhodes named the “Chaldeans” (the ancient Babylonians) as the discoverers of the exact motions of the Moon. The historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century B.C., confirmed the exactness of Mesopotamian astronomy; he stated that “the Chaldeans named the planets … in the center of their system was the Sun, the greatest light, of which the planets were ‘offspring,’ reflecting the Sun’s position and shine.”

The acknowledged source of Greek astronomical knowledge was, then, Chaldea; invariably, those earlier Chaldeans possessed greater and more accurate knowledge than the peoples that followed them. For generations, throughout the ancient world, the name “Chaldean” was synonymous with “stargazers,” astronomers.

Abraham, who came out of “Ur of the Chaldeans,” was told by God to gaze at the stars when the future Hebrew generations were discussed. Indeed, the Old Testament was replete with astronomical information. Joseph compared himself and his brothers to twelve celestial bodies, and the patriarch Jacob blessed his twelve descendants by associating them with the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The Psalms and the Book of Job refer repeatedly to celestial phenomena, the zodiacal constellations, and other star groups (such as the Pleiades). Knowledge of the zodiac, the scientific division of the heavens, and other astronomical information was thus prevalent in the ancient Near East well before the days of ancient Greece.

The scope of Mesopotamian astronomy on which the early Greek astronomers drew must have been vast, for even what archaeologists have found amounts to an avalanche of texts, inscriptions, seal impressions, reliefs, drawings, lists of celestial bodies, omens, calendars, tables of rising and setting times of the Sun and the planets, forecasts of eclipses. Many such later texts were, to be sure, more astrological than astronomical in nature. The heavens and the movements of the heavenly bodies appeared to be a prime preoccupation of mighty kings, temple priests, and the people of the land in general; the purpose of the stargazing seemed to be to find in the heavens an answer to the course of affairs on Earth: war, peace, abundance, famine. Compiling and analyzing hundreds of texts from the first millennium B.C., R. C. Thompson (The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon) was able to show that these stargazers were concerned with the fortunes of the land, its people, and its ruler from a national point of view, and not with individual fortunes (as present-day “horoscopic” astrology is): When the Moon in its calculated time is not seen, there will be an invasion of a mighty city.

When a comet reaches the path of the Sun, field-flow will be diminished; an uproar will happen twice. When Jupiter goes with Venus, the prayers of the land will reach the heart of the gods. If the Sun stands in the station of the Moon, the king of the land will be secure on the throne.

Even this astrology required comprehensive and accurate astronomical knowledge, without which no omens were possible. The Mesopotamians, possessing such knowledge, distinguished between the “fixed” stars and the planets that “wandered about” and knew that the Sun and the Moon were neither fixed stars nor ordinary planets. They were familiar with comets, meteors, and other celestial phenomena, and could calculate the relationships between the movements of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and predict eclipses. They followed the motions of the celestial bodies and related them to Earth’s orbit and rotation through the heliacal system—the system still in use today, which measures the rising and setting of stars and planets in Earth’s skies relative to the Sun. To keep track of the movements of the celestial bodies and their positions in the heavens relative to Earth and to one another, the Babylonians and Assyrians kept accurate ephemerides. These were tables that listed and predicted the future positions of the celestial bodies. Professor George Sarton (Chaldean Astronomy of the Last Three Centuries B.C.) found that they were computed by two methods: a later one used in Babylon, and an older one from Uruk. His unexpected finding was that the older, Uruk method was more sophisticated and more accurate than the later system. He accounted for this surprising situation by concluding that the erroneous astronomical notions of the Greeks and Romans resulted from a shift to a philosophy that explained the world in geometric terms, while the astronomerpriests of Chaldea followed the prescribed formulas and traditions of Sumer. The unearthing of the Mesopotamian civilizations in the past one hundred years leaves no doubt that in the field of astronomy, as in so many others, the roots of our knowledge lie deep in Mesopotamia. In this field, too, we draw upon and continue the heritage of Sumer.

Sarton’s conclusions have been reinforced by very comprehensive studies by Professor O. Neugebauer (Astronomical Cuneiform Texts), who was astonished to find that the ephemerides, precise as they were, were not based on observations by the Babylonian astronomers who prepared them. Instead, they were calculated “from some fixed arithmetical schemes … which were given and were not to be interfered with” by the astronomers who used them.

Such automatic adherence to “arithmetical schemes” was achieved with the aid of “procedure texts” that accompanied the ephemerides, which “gave the rules for computing ephemerides step by step” according to some “strict mathematical theory.” Neugebauer concluded that the Babylonian astronomers were ignorant of the theories on which the ephemerides and their mathematical calculations were based. He also admitted that “the empirical and theoretical foundation” of these accurate tables, to a large extent, escapes modern scholars as well. Yet he is convinced that ancient astronomical theories “must have existed, because it is impossible to devise computational schemes of high complication without a very elaborate plan.”

Professor Alfred Jeremias (Handbuch der Altorientalischen Geistkultur) concluded that the Mesopotamian astronomers were acquainted with the phenomenon of retrograde, the apparent erratic and snakelike course of the planets as seen from Earth, caused by the fact that Earth orbits the Sun either faster or slower than the other planets. The significance of such knowledge lies not only in the fact that retrograde is a phenomenon related to orbits around the Sun, but also in the fact that very long periods of observation were required to grasp and track it.

Where were these complicated theories developed, and who made the observations without which they could not have been developed? Neugebauer pointed out that “in the procedure texts, we meet a great number of technical terms of wholly unknown reading, if not unknown meaning.” Someone, much earlier than the Babylonians, possessed astronomical and mathematical knowledge far superior to that of later culture in Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

The Babylonians and Assyrians devoted a substantial part of their astronomical efforts to keeping an accurate calendar. Like the Jewish calendar to this very day, it was a solar-lunar calendar, correlating (“intercalating”) the solar year of just over 365 days with a lunar month of just under 30 days. While a calendar was important for business and other mundane needs, its accuracy was required primarily to determine the precise day and moment of the New Year, and other festivals and worship of the gods.

To measure and correlate the intricate movements of Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets, the Mesopotamian astronomer-priests relied on a complex spherical astronomy. Earth was taken to be a sphere with an equator and poles; the heavens, too, were divided by imaginary equatorial and polar lines. The passage of celestial bodies was related to the ecliptic, the projection of the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun upon the celestial sphere; the equinoxes (the points and the times at which the Sun in its apparent annual movement north and south crosses the celestial equator); and the solstices (the time when the Sun during its apparent annual movement along the ecliptic is at its greatest declination north or south). All these are astronomical concepts used to this very day.

But the Babylonians and Assyrians did not invent the calendar or the ingenious methods for its calculation. Their calendars-as well as our own—originated in Sumer. There the scholars have found a calendar, in use from the very earliest times, that is the basis for all later calendars. The principal calendar and model was the calendar of Nippur, the seat and center of Enlil. Our present-day one is modeled on that Nippurian calendar.

The Sumerians considered the New Year to begin at the exact moment when the Sun crossed the spring equinox. Professor Stephen Langdon (Tablets from the Archives of Drehem) found that records left by Dungi, a ruler of Ur circa 2400 B.C., show that the Nippurian calendar selected a certain celestial body by whose setting against the sunset it was possible to determine the exact moment of the New Year’s arrival. This, he concluded, was done “perhaps 2,000 years before the era of Dungi”—that is, circa 4400 B.C.!

Can it really be that the Sumerians, without actual instruments, nevertheless had the sophisticated astronomical and mathematical know-how required by a spherical astronomy and geometry? Indeed they had, as their language shows. They had a term—DUB—that meant (in astronomy) the 360-degree “circumference of the world,” in relation to which they spoke of the curvature or arc of the heavens. For their astronomical and mathematical calculations they drew the AN.UR—an imagined “heavenly horizon” against which they could measure the rising and setting of celestial bodies. Perpendicular to this horizon they extended an imagined vertical line, the NU.BU.SAR.DA; with its aid they obtained the zenith point and called it the AN.PA. They traced the lines we call meridians, and called them “the graded yokes”; latitude lines were called “middle lines of heaven.” The latitude line marking the summer solstice, for example, was called AN.BIL (“fiery point of the heavens”).

The Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, and other literary masterpieces of the ancient Near East, being translations or versions of Sumerian originals, were replete with Sumerian loanwords pertaining to celestial bodies and phenomena. Babylonian and Assyrian scholars who drew up star lists or wrote down calculations of planetary movements often noted the Sumerian originals on the tablets that they were copying or translating. The 25,000 texts devoted to astronomy and astrology said to have been included in the Nineveh library of Ashurbanipal frequently bore acknowledgments of Sumerian origins.

A major astronomical series that the Babylonians called “The Day of the Lord” was declared by its scribes to have been copied from a Sumerian tablet written in the time of Sargon of Akkad—in the third millennium B.C. A tablet dated to the third dynasty of Ur, also in the third millennium B.C., describes and lists a series of celestial bodies so clearly that modern scholars had little difficulty in recognizing the text as a classification of constellations, among them Ursa Major, Draco, Lyra, Cygnus and Cepheus, and Triangulum in the northern skies; Orion, Canis Major, Hydra, Corvus, and Centaurus in the southern skies; and the familiar zodiacal constellations in the central celestial band.

In ancient Mesopotamia the secrets of celestial knowledge were guarded, studied, and transmitted by astronomer-priests. It was thus perhaps fitting that three scholars who are credited with giving back to us this lost “Chaldean” science were Jesuit priests: Joseph Epping, Johann Strassman, and Franz X. Kugler. Kugler, in a masterwork (Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel), analyzed, deciphered, sorted out, and explained a vast number of texts and lists. In one instance, by mathematically “turning the skies backwards,” he was able to show that a list of thirty-three celestial bodies in the Babylonian skies of 1800 B.C. was neatly arranged according to present-day groupings!

After much work deciding which are true groups and which are merely subgroups, the world’s astronomical community agreed (in 1925) to divide the heavens as seen from Earth into three regions—northern, central, and southern— and group the stars therein into eighty-eight constellations. As it turned out, there was nothing new in this arrangement, for the Sumerians were the first to divide the heavens into three bands or “ways”—the northern “way” was named after Enlil, the southern after Ea, and the central band was the “Way of Anu”—and to assign to them various constellations. The present-day central band, the band of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, corresponds exactly to the Way of Anu, in which the Sumerians grouped the stars into twelve houses. In antiquity, as today, the phenomenon was related to the concept of the zodiac. The great circle of Earth around the Sun was divided into twelve equal parts, of thirty degrees each. The stars seen in each of these segments, or “houses,” were grouped together into a constellation, each of which was then named according to the shape the stars of the group seemed to form.

Because the constellation and their subdivisions, and even individual stars within the constellations, have reached Western civilization with names and descriptions borrowed heavily from Greek mythology, the Western world tended for nearly two millennia to credit the Greeks with this achievement. But it is now apparent that the early Greek astronomers merely adopted into their language and mythology a ready-made astronomy obtained from the Sumerians. We have already noted how Hipparchus, Eudoxus, and others obtained their knowledge. Even Thales, the earliest Greek astronomer of consequence, who is said to have predicted the total solar eclipse of May 28, 585 B.C., which stopped the war between the Lydians and the Medians, allowed that the sources of his knowledge were of pre-Semitic Mesopotamian origins, namely—Sumerian.

We have acquired the name “zodiac” from the Greek zodiakos kyklos (“animal circle”) because the layout of the star groups was likened to the shape of a lion, fishes, and so on. But those imaginary shapes and names were actually originated by the Sumerians, who called the twelve zodiacal constellations UL.HE (“shiny herd”):

GU.AN.NA (“heavenly bull”), Taurus. MASH.TAB.BA (“twins”), our Gemini. DUB (“pincers,” “tongs”), the Crab or Cancer. UR.GULA (“lion”), which we call Leo. AB.SIN (“her father was Sin”), the Maiden, Virgo. ZI.BA.AN.NA (“heavenly fate”), the scales of Libra. GIR.TAB (“which claws and cuts”), Scorpio. PA.BlL (“defender”), the Archer, Sagittarius. SUHUR.MASH (“goat-fish”), Capricorn. GU (“lord of the waters”), the Water Bearer, Aquarius. SIM.MAH (“fishes”), Pisces. KU.MAL (“field dweller”), the Ram, Aries.

The pictorial representations or signs of the zodiac, like their names, have remained virtually intact since their introduction in Sumer. (Fig. 93)

Illustration: Pictorial Representations of the Zodiac

Until the introduction of the telescope, European astronomers accepted the Ptolemaic recognition of only nineteen constellations in the northern skies. By 1925, when the current classification was agreed upon, twenty-eight constellations had been recognized in what the Sumerians called the Way of Enlil. We should no longer be surprised to find out that, unlike Ptolemy, the earlier Sumerians recognized, identified, grouped, named, and listed all the constellations of the northern skies! Of the celestial bodies in the Way of Enlil, twelve were deemed to be of Enlil— paralleling the twelve zodiacal celestial bodies in the Way of Anu. Likewise, in the southern portion of the skies—the Way of Ea—twelve constellations were listed, not merely as present in the southern skies, but as of the god Ea. In addition to these twelve principal constellations of Ea, several others were listed for the southern skies—though not so many as are recognized today. The Way of Ea posed serious problems to the Assyriologists who undertook the immense task of unraveling the ancient astronomical knowledge not only in terms of modern knowledge but also based on what the skies should have looked like centuries and millennia ago. Observing the southern skies from Ur or Babylon, the Mesopotamian astronomers could see only a little more than halfway into the southern skies; the rest was already below the horizon. Yet, if correctly identified, some of the constellations of the Way of Ea lay well beyond the horizon. But there was an even greater problem: If, as the scholars assumed, the Mesopotamians believed (as the Greeks did in later times) that Earth was a mass of dry land resting upon the chaotic darkness of a netherworld (the Greek Hades)—a flat disc over which the heavens arched in a semicircle—then there should have been no southern skies at all! Restricted by the assumption that the Mesopotamians were beholden to a flatEarth concept, modern scholars could not permit their conclusions to take them too much below the equatorial line dividing north and south. The evidence, however, shows that the three Sumerian “ways” encompassed the complete skies of a global, not flat, Earth. 1900 T. G. Pinches reported to the Royal Asiatic Society that he was able to reassemble and reconstruct a complete Mesopotamian astrolabe (literally, “taker of stars”). He showed it to be a circular disc, divided like a pie into twelve segments and three concentric rings, resulting in a field of thirty-six portions. The whole design had the appearance of a rosette of twelve “leaves,” each of which had the name of a month written in it. Pinches marked them I to XII for convenience, starting. with Nisannu, the first month of the Mesopotamian calendar. (Fig. 94) Each of the thirty-six portions also contained a name with a small circle below it, signifying that it was the name of a celestial body. The names have since been found in many texts and “star lists” and are undoubtedly the names of constellations, stars, or planets. Each of the thirty-six segments also had a number written below the name of the celestial body. In the innermost ring, the numbers ranged from 30 to 60; in the central ring, from 60 (written as “I”) to 120 (this “2” in the sexagesimal system meant 2 X 60 = 120); and in the outermost ring, from 120 to 240. What did these numbers represent? Writing nearly fifty years after the presentation by Pinches, the astronomer and Assyriologist O. Neugebauer (A History of Ancient Astronomy: Problems and Methods) could only say that “the whole text constitutes some kind of schematic celestial map … in each of the thirty-six fields we find the name of a constellation and simple numbers whose significance is not yet clear.” A leading expert on the subject, B. L. Van der Waerden (Babylonian Astronomy: The Thirty-Six Stars), reflecting on the apparent rise and fall of the numbers in some rhythm, could only suggest that “the numbers have something to do with the duration of daylight.” The puzzle can be solved, we believe, only if one discards the notion that the Mesopotamians believed in a flat Earth, and recognizes that their astronomical knowledge was as good as ours—not because they had better instruments than we do, but because their source of information was the Nefilim. We suggest that the enigmatic numbers represent degrees of the celestial are, with the North Pole as the starting point, and that the astrolabe was a planisphere, the representation of a sphere upon a flat surface. While the numbers increase and decrease, those in the opposite segments for the Way of Enlil (such as Nisannu—50, Tashritu—40) add up to 90; all those for the Way of Anu add up to 180; and all those for the Way of Ea add up to 360 (such as Nisannu 200, Tashritu 160). These figures are too familiar to be misunderstood; they represent segments of a complete spherical circumference: a quarter of the way (90 degrees), halfway (180 degrees), or full circle (360 degrees). The numbers given for the Way of Enlil are so paired as to show that this Sumerian segment of the northern skies stretched over 60 degrees from the North Pole, bordering on the Way of Anu at 30 degrees above the equator. The Way of Anu was equidistant on both sides of the equator, reaching to 30 degrees south below the equator. Then, farther south and farthest away from the North Pole, lay the Way of Ea—that part of Earth and of the celestial globe that lay between 30 degrees south and the South Pole. (Fig. 95) Illustration: The Celestial Sphere The numbers in the Way of Ea segments add up to 180 degrees in Addaru (February–March) and Ululu (August–September). The only point that is 180 degrees away from the North Pole, whether you go south on the east or on the west, is the South Pole. And this can hold true only if one deals with a sphere. Precession is the phenomenon caused by the wobble of Earth’s north-south axis, causing the North Pole (the one pointing at the North Star) and the South Pole to trace a grand circle in the heavens. The apparent retardation of Earth against the starry constellations amounts to about fifty seconds of an arc in one year, or one degree in seventy-two years. The grand circle—the time it takes the Earth’s North Pole to point again at the same North Star—therefore lasts 25,920 years (72 X 360), and that is what the astronomers call the Great Year or the Platonian Year (for apparently Plato, too, was aware of the phenomenon). The rising and setting of various stars deemed significant in antiquity, and the precise determination of the spring equinox (which ushered in the New Year), were related to the zodiacal house in which they occurred. Due to the precession, the spring equinox and the other celestial phenomena, being retarded from year to year, were finally retarded once in 2,160 years by a full zodiacal house. Our astronomers continue to employ a “zero point” (“the first point of Aries”), which marked the spring equinox circa 900 B.C., but this point has by now shifted well into the house of Pisces. Circa A.D. 2100 the spring equinox will begin to occur in the preceding house of Aquarius. This is what is meant by those who say that we are about to enter the Age of Aquarius. (Fig. 96). Illustration: Entering the Age of Aquarius Because the shift from one zodiacal house to another takes more than two millennia, scholars wondered how and where Hipparchus could have learned of the precession in the second century B.C. It is now clear that his source was Sumerian. Professor Langdon’s findings reveal that the Nippurian calendar, established circa 4400 B.C., in the Age of Taurus, reflects knowledge of the precession and the shift of zodiacal houses that took place 2,160 years earlier than that. Professor Jeremias, who correlated Mesopotamian astronomical texts with Hittite astronomical texts, was also of the opinion that older astronomical tablets recorded the change from Taurus to Aries; and he concluded that the Mesopotamian astronomers predicted and anticipated the shift from Aries to Pisces. A. The Way of Anu, the celestial band of the Sun, planets and the constellations of the Zodiac B. The way of Enlil, the northern skies C. The Way of Ea, the southern skies

Subscribing to these conclusions, Professor Willy Hartner (The Earliest History of the Constellations in the Near East) suggested that the Sumerians left behind plentiful pictorial evidence to that effect.

When the spring equinox was in the zodiac of Taurus, the summer solstice occurred in the zodiac of Leo.

Hartner drew attention to the recurrent motif of a bull–lion “combat” appearing in Sumerian depictions from earliest times, and suggested that these motifs represented the key positions of the constellations of Taurus (Bull) and Leo (Lion) to an observer at 30 degrees north (such as at Ur) circa 4000 B.C. (Fig. 97)

Most scholars consider the Sumerian stress of Taurus as their first constellation as evidence not only of the antiquity of the zodiac—dating to circa 4000 B.C.—but also as testifying to the time when Sumerian civilization so suddenly began.

Professor Jeremias (The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East) found evidence showing that the Sumerian zodiacal-chronological “point zero” stood precisely between the Bull and the Twins; from this and other data he concluded that the zodiac was devised in the Age of Gemini (the Twins)—that is, even before Sumerian civilization began.

A Sumerian tablet in the Berlin Museum (VAT.7847) begins the list of zodiacal constellations with that of Leo-taking us back to circa 11,000 B.C., when Man had just begun to till the land.

Professor H. V. Hilprecht (The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania) went even farther. Studying thousands of tablets bearing mathematical tabulations, he concluded that “all the multiplication and division tables from the temple libraries of Nippur and Sippar, and from the library of Ashurbanipal [in Nineveh] are based upon [the number] 12960000.” Analyzing this number and its significance, he concluded that it could be related only to the phenomenon of the precession, and that the Sumerians knew of the Great Year of 25,920 years.

This is indeed fantastic astronomical sophistication at an impossible time.

Just as it is evident that the Sumerian astronomers possessed knowledge that they could not possibly have acquired on their own, so is there evidence to show that a good deal of their knowledge was of no practical use to them.

This pertains not only to the very sophisticated astronomical methods that were used—who in ancient Sumer really needed to establish a celestial equator, for example?—but also to a variety of elaborate texts that dealt with the measurement of distances between stars.

One of these texts, known as AO.6478, lists the twenty-six major stars visible along the line we now call the Tropic of Cancer, and gives distances between them as measured in three different ways. The text first gives the distances between these stars by a unit called mana shukultu (“measured and weighed”). It is believed that this was an ingenious device that related the weight of escaping water to the passage of time. It made possible the determination of distances between two stars in terms of time. The second column of distances was in terms of degrees of the arc of the skies. The full day (daylight and nighttime) was divided into twelve double hours. The arc of the heavens comprised a full circle of 360 degrees. Hence, one beru or “double hour” represented 30 degrees of the arc of the heavens. By this method, passage of time on Earth provided a measure of the distances in degrees between the named celestial bodies. The third method of measurement was beru ina shame (“length in the skies”). F. Thureau-Dangin (Distances entre Etoiles Fixes) pointed out that while the first two methods were relative to other phenomena, this third method provided absolute measurements. A “celestial beru,” he and others believe, was equivalent to 10,692 of our present-day meters (11,693 yards). The “distance in the skies” between the twenty-six stars was calculated in the text as adding up to 655,200 “beru drawn in the skies.” The availability of three different methods of measuring distances between stars conveys the great importance attached to the matter. Yet, who among the men and women of Sumer needed such knowledge—and who among them could devise the methods and accurately use them? The only possible answer is: The Nefilim had the knowledge and the need for such accurate measurements. Capable of space travel, arriving on Earth from another planet, roaming Earth’s skies—they were the only ones who could, and did, possess at the dawn of Mankind’s civilization the astronomical knowledge that required millennia to develop, the sophisticated methods and mathematics and concepts for an advanced astronomy, and the need to teach human scribes to copy and record meticulously table upon table of distances in the heavens, order of stars and groups of stars, heliacal risings and settings, a complex Sun-Moon-Earth calendar, and the rest of the remarkable knowledge of both Heaven and Earth. Against this background, can it still be assumed that the Mesopotamian astronomers, guided by the Nefilim, were not aware of the planets beyond Saturn—that they did not know of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto? Was their knowledge of Earth’s own family, the solar system, less complete than that of distant stars, their order, and their distances? Astronomical information from ancient times contained in hundreds of detailed texts lists celestial bodies, neatly arranged by their celestial order or by the gods or the months or the lands or the constellations with which they were associated. One such text, analyzed by Ernst F. Weidner (Handbuch der Babylonischen Astronomie), has come to be called “The Great Star List.” It listed in five columns tens of celestial bodies as related to one another, to months, countries, and deities. Another text listed correctly the main stars in the zodiacal constellations. A text indexed as B.M.86378 arranged (in its unbroken part) seventy-one celestial bodies by their location in the heavens; and so on and on and on. In efforts to make sense of this legion of texts, and in particular to identify correctly the planets of our solar system, a succession of scholars came up with confusing results. As we now know, their efforts were doomed to failure because they incorrectly assumed that the Sumerians and their successors were unaware that the solar system was heliocentric, that Earth was but another planet, and that there were more planets beyond Saturn. Ignoring the possibility that some names in the star lists may have applied to Earth itself, and seeking to apply the great number of other names and epithets only to the five planets they believed were known to the Sumerians, scholars reached conflicting conclusions. Some scholars even suggested that the confusion was not theirs, but a Chaldean mix-up—for some unknown reason, they said, the Chaldeans had switched around the names of the five “known” planets. The Sumerians referred to all celestial bodies (planets, stars, or constellations) as MUL (“who shine in the heights”). The Akkadian term kakkab was likewise applied by the Babylonians and Assyrians as a general term for any celestial body. This practice further frustrated the scholars seeking to unravel the ancient astronomical texts. But some mul’s that were termed LU.BAD clearly designated planets of our solar system. Knowing that the Greek name for the planets was “wanderers,” the scholars have read LU.BAD as “wandering sheep,” deriving from LU (“those which are shepherded”) and BAD (“high and afar”). But now that we have shown that the Sumerians were fully aware of the true nature of the solar system, the other meanings of the term bad (“the olden,” “the foundation,” “the one where death is”) assume direct significance. These are appropriate epithets for the Sun, and it follows that by lubad the Sumerians meant not mere “wandering sheep” but “sheep” shepherded by the Sun—the planets of our Sun. The location and relation of the lubad to each other and to the Sun were described in many Mesopotamian astronomical texts. There were references to those planets that are “above” and those that are “below,” and Kugler correctly guessed that the reference point was Earth itself. But mostly the planets were spoken of in the framework of astronomical texts dealing with MUL.MUL—a term that kept the scholars guessing. In the absence of a better solution, most scholars have agreed that the term mulmul stood for the Pleiades, a cluster of stars in the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, and the one through which the axis of the spring equinox passed (as viewed from Babylon) circa 2200 B.C. Mesopotamian texts often indicated that the mulmul included seven LU.MASH (seven “wanderers that are familiar”), and the scholars assumed that these were the brightest members of the Pleiades, which can be seen with the naked eye. The fact that, depending on classification, the group has either six or nine such bright stars, and not seven, posed a problem; but it was brushed aside for lack of any better ideas as to the meaning of mulmul. Franz Kugler (Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel), reluctantly accepted the Pleiades as the solution, but expressed his astonishment when he found it stated unambiguously in Mesopotamian texts that mulmul included not only “wanderers” (planets) but also the Sun and the Moon-making it impossible to retain the Pleiades idea. He also came upon texts that clearly stated that “mulmul ul-shu 12” (“mulmul is a band of twelve”), of which ten formed a distinct group. We suggest that the term mulmul referred to the solar system, using the repetitive (MUL.MUL) to indicate the group as a whole, as “the celestial body comprising all celestial bodies.” Charles Virolleaud (L’Astrologie Chaldéenne), transliterated a Mesopotamian text (K.3558) that describes the members of the mulmul or kakkabu/kakkabu group.

The text’s last line is explicit: Kakkabu/kakkabu. The number of its celestial bodies is twelve. The stations of its celestial bodies twelve. The complete months of the Moon is twelve. The texts leave no doubt: The mulmul—our solar system—was made up of twelve members. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise, for the Greek scholar Diodorus, explaining the three “ways” of the Chaldeans and the consequent listing of thirty-six celestial bodies, stated that “of those celestial gods, twelve hold chief authority; to each of these the Chaldeans assign a month and a sign of the zodiac.”

Ernst Weidner (Der Tierkreis und die Wege am Himmel) reported that in addition to the Way of Anu and its twelve zodiac constellations, some texts also referred to the “way of the Sun,” which was also made up of twelve celestial bodies: the Sun, the Moon, and ten others. Line 20 of the so-called TE-tablet stated: “naphar 12 shere-mesh ha.la. sha kakkab.lu sha Sin u Shamash ina libbi ittiqu,” which means, “all in all, 12 members where the Moon and Sun belong, where the planets orbit.” We can now grasp the significance of the number twelve in the ancient world. The Great Circle of Sumerian gods, and of all Olympian gods thereafter, comprised exactly twelve; younger gods could join this circle only if older gods retired. Likewise, a vacancy had to be filled to retain the divine number twelve. The principal celestial circle, the way of the Sun with its twelve members, set the pattern, according to which each other celestial band was divided into twelve segments or was allocated twelve principal celestial bodies. Accordingly, there were twelve months in a year, twelve double-hours in a day. Each division of Sumer was assigned twelve celestial bodies as a measure of good luck. Many studies, such as the one by S. Langdon (Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendar) show that the division of the year into twelve months was, from its very beginnings, related to the twelve Great Gods. Fritz Hommel (Die Astronomie der alten Chaldäer) and others after him have shown that the twelve months were closely connected with the twelve zodiacs and that both derived from twelve principal celestial bodies. Charles F. Jean (Lexicologie sumerienne) reproduced a Sumerian list of twenty-four celestial bodies that paired twelve zodiacal constellations with twelve members of our solar system. In a long text, identified by F. Thureau-Dangin (Rituels accadiens) as a temple program for the New Year Festival in Babylon, the evidence for the consecration of twelve as the central celestial phenomenon is persuasive. The great temple, the Esagila, had twelve gates. The powers of all the celestial gods were vested in Marduk by reciting twelve times the pronouncement “My Lord, is He not my Lord.” The mercy of the god was then invoked twelve times, and that of his spouse twelve times. The total of twenty-four was then matched with the twelve zodiacal constellations and twelve members of the solar system. A boundary stone carved with the symbols of the celestial bodies by a king of Susa depicts these twenty-four signs: the familiar twelve signs of the zodiac, and symbols that stand for the twelve members of the solar system. These were the twelve astral gods of Mesopotamia, as well as of the Hurrian, Hittite, Greek, and all other ancient pantheons.(Fig.98)

Illustration: Signs of the Zodiac and the Solar System

Although our natural counting base is the number ten, the number twelve permeated all matters celestial and divine long after the Sumerians were gone.

There were 12 Greek Titans, twelve Tribes of Israel, twelve parts to the magical breastplate of the Israelite High Priest. The power of this celestial 12 carried over to the twelve Apostles of Jesus, and even in our decimal system we count from one to twelve, and only after twelve do we return to “ten and three” (thirteen), “ten and four,” and so on. Where did this powerful, decisive number twelve stem from? From the heavens.

For the solar system—the mulmul—included, in addition to all the planets known to us, also the planet of Anu, the one whose symbol—a radiant celestial body—stood in the Sumerian writing for the god Anu and for “divine.”

“The kakkab of the Supreme Scepter is one of the sheep in mulmul,” explained an astronomical text. And when Marduk usurped the supremacy and replaced Anu as the god associated with this planet, the Babylonians said: “The planet of Marduk within mulmul appears.”

Teaching humanity the true nature of Earth and the heavens, the Nefilim informed the ancient astronomer-priests not only of the planets beyond Saturn but also of the existence of the most important planet, the one from which they came: