DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4668#0200
182 Note on Kalendar of Babylonia. [On.
or half-educated native should acquire a smattering of
the astronomy, so far as to obtain the measure of one
cycle and the name of another ; then we should have the
confusion between Anomaly and Equinox contained in
the Babylonian measures. And suppose again, that the
same ingenious inquirer should hear, without under-
standing, of the double reckoning involved in the Sothiac
cycle ; and in order to make things quite correct, should
apply it to the period he had devised for precession ; then
we should have the 43,200 years (2x21,600) above
described. Whether or not this be the explanation, a
remarkable example of a very similar misconception is
supplied by the orientation of their buildings. For, as
the late Professor De Lacouperic pointed out, their car-
dinal points, though relatively correct, are all shifted
through one-eighth of a circle, their South really being-
South-West. And this, it will be easily seen, is precisely
what would be done by any one who, having obtained his
notion of the cardinal points in Egypt without under-
standing the principle, should imagine them to be fixed,
and should use the Egyptian points while dwelling in
Babylonia.
Such an origin is quite in agreement with other points
connected with Babylonian civilization. That certain
of their principal measures, such as the standard of
Telloh, were derived from Egypt is undoubted. And
their tradition that the elements of their civilization were
imparted by Oannes, half man and half fish, who retired
every night into the sea, just answers the description of
an immigrant sailing up the Persian Gulf from the Eastern
coast of Egypt, and retiring to his ship each night; while
or half-educated native should acquire a smattering of
the astronomy, so far as to obtain the measure of one
cycle and the name of another ; then we should have the
confusion between Anomaly and Equinox contained in
the Babylonian measures. And suppose again, that the
same ingenious inquirer should hear, without under-
standing, of the double reckoning involved in the Sothiac
cycle ; and in order to make things quite correct, should
apply it to the period he had devised for precession ; then
we should have the 43,200 years (2x21,600) above
described. Whether or not this be the explanation, a
remarkable example of a very similar misconception is
supplied by the orientation of their buildings. For, as
the late Professor De Lacouperic pointed out, their car-
dinal points, though relatively correct, are all shifted
through one-eighth of a circle, their South really being-
South-West. And this, it will be easily seen, is precisely
what would be done by any one who, having obtained his
notion of the cardinal points in Egypt without under-
standing the principle, should imagine them to be fixed,
and should use the Egyptian points while dwelling in
Babylonia.
Such an origin is quite in agreement with other points
connected with Babylonian civilization. That certain
of their principal measures, such as the standard of
Telloh, were derived from Egypt is undoubted. And
their tradition that the elements of their civilization were
imparted by Oannes, half man and half fish, who retired
every night into the sea, just answers the description of
an immigrant sailing up the Persian Gulf from the Eastern
coast of Egypt, and retiring to his ship each night; while