. The dawn of civilization: Egypt and Chaldaea . The Dream of Scipio, i. 21, § 9), attributethe origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Siculus asserts that they were the teachers ofthe Babylonians ; Josephus (Ant. Jud., i. 8,2) maintains, on the coniniry, that the Egyptians were thepupils of the ChaldcBans. 2 Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to 720,000 years before the time ofAlexander, while Berossus and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490,000 years (Pliny, Hist. Nat,vii. 57), which was further reduced to 473,000 years by Diodorus (ii. 31), to 470,000 by
. The dawn of civilization: Egypt and Chaldaea . The Dream of Scipio, i. 21, § 9), attributethe origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Siculus asserts that they were the teachers ofthe Babylonians ; Josephus (Ant. Jud., i. 8,2) maintains, on the coniniry, that the Egyptians were thepupils of the ChaldcBans. 2 Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to 720,000 years before the time ofAlexander, while Berossus and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490,000 years (Pliny, Hist. Nat,vii. 57), which was further reduced to 473,000 years by Diodorus (ii. 31), to 470,000 by Cicero (DuDivinatione, i. 19), and to 270,000 by Hipparchus. 3 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Peiser, Eine Babylonische Landharte, in the Zeit-schrift fiir Assyriologie, vol. iv. p. 369. 4 The number 1903 is merely introduced by way of correction in the text of Simplicius (Com-mentary on the De Cœlo of Aristotle, p. 503 a), to whom we are indebted, after Porphyry, for thoaccount of the observations sent by Callisthenes to 7 7 G CHALDjEAN civilization. planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To their unaidedeyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparency of the air,many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we can perceive onlyby the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliant bodies, scatteredapparently at random over the face of the sky, moved, however, with perfectregularity, and the period between their departure from and their return tothe same point in the heavens was determined at an early date : their positioncould be predicted at any hour, their course in the firmament being traced soaccurately that its various stages were marked out and indicated moon, they discovered, had to complete two hundred and twenty-threerevolutions of twenty-nine days and a half each, before it returned to thepoint from which it had set out. This period of its career being accomplished,it began a second of equa
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidd, booksubjectcivilization
