|Fishes). |Feb.-March). | | +-----------------------------------------------------------
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The Babylonian Creation myth states that Merodach, having fixed the stars of the Zodiac, made three stars for each month (p. 147).  Mr. Robert Brown, jun., who has dealt as exhaustively with the astronomical problems of Babylonia as the available data permitted him, is of opinion that the leading stars of three constellations are referred to, viz.:  (1) the central or zodiacal constellations, (2) the northern constellations, and (3) the southern constellations.  We have thus a scheme of thirty-six constellations.  The “twelve zodiacal stars were flanked on either side by twelve non-zodiacal stars”.  Mr. Brown quotes Diodorus, who gave a resume of Babylonian astronomico-astrology, in this connection.  He said that “the five planets were called ‘Interpreters’; and in subjection to these were marshalled ‘Thirty Stars’, which were styled ’Divinities of the Council’....  The chiefs of the Divinities are twelve in number, to each of whom they assign a month and one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.”  Through these twelve signs sun, moon, and planets run their courses.  “And with the zodiacal circle they mark out twenty-four stars, half of which they say are arranged in the north and half in the south."[328] Mr. Brown shows that the thirty stars referred to “constituted the original Euphratean Lunar Zodiac, the parent of the seven ancient lunar zodiacs which have come down to us, namely, the Persian, Sogdian, Khorasmian, Chinese, Indian, Arab, and Coptic schemes”.

The three constellations associated with each month had each a symbolic significance:  they reflected the characters of their months.  At the height of the rainy season, for instance, the month of Ramman, the thunder god, was presided over by the zodiacal constellation of the water urn, the northern constellation “Fish of the Canal”, and the southern “the Horse”.  In India the black horse was sacrificed at rain-getting and fertility ceremonies.  The months of growth, pestilence, and scorching sun heat were in turn symbolized.  The “Great Bear” was the “chariot” = “Charles’s Wain”, and the “Milky Way” the “river of the high cloud”, the Celestial Euphrates, as in Egypt it was the Celestial Nile.

Of special interest among the many problems presented by Babylonian astronomical lore is the theory of Cosmic periods or Ages of the Universe.  In the Indian, Greek, and Irish mythologies there are four Ages—­the Silvern (white), Golden (yellow), the Bronze (red), and the Iron (black).  As has been already indicated, Mr. R. Brown, jun., shows that “the Indian system of Yugas, or ages of the world, presents many features which forcibly remind us of the Euphratean scheme”.  The Babylonians had ten antediluvian kings, who were reputed to have reigned for vast periods, the total of which amounted to 120 saroi, or 432,000 years.  These figures at once recall the Indian Maha-yuga of 4,320,000 years = 432,000 x 10.  Apparently the Babylonian and Indian systems of calculation were of common origin.  In both countries the measurements of time and space were arrived at by utilizing the numerals 10 and 6.