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Interesting documents

Post #1

Post by Difflugia »

I linked to a Google scan of an article in this comment, so I thought I'd do OCR and clean-up on the article to make it more accessible. I named the thread generically so that I might add to it in the future if I want a place to put similar documents. I guess we'll see if I do or not.
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Babylonian Number Systems and the Origin of the Calendar

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Babylonian Number Systems and the Origin of the Calendar

by the Rev Professor Andrew C. Baird, B.Sc., D.D.

[source]

In how far the marvellous progress of the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians in a knowledge of astronomy and in the invention of methods of accurate chronology was due to their possession of a system of numeration far in advance of any other nation of antiquity, is difficult for us to determine, for the Sumero-Babylonian number system was itself a product of accurate astronomical observation and mathematical genius.

At least as early as 3000 B.C. the Sumerians invented a number system and method of reckoning that made calculations comparatively simple, and up to the time of the adoption of Arabic numerals and the invention of the cypher theirs was the most perfect numerical system in the world.

At the very beginning of Sumerian civilisation, before the cuneiform style of writing was developed from simple picture writing, the Sumerians, like almost all primitive peoples, used a decimal system derived from the use of the ten digits. They represented the numbers up to 10 by varying numbers of round depressions made on clay tablets by the end of the stilus, and they symbolised the tens by still larger depressions.

When, however, at a very early period the Sumerians discovered a means of reckoning time accurately and invented a calendar, their observation of the measure of time led to their adoption of a new numerical system based on their astronomical observations. This number system as well as the astronomical data on which it was based was closely associated with the religious ideas of the Sumero-Babylonians. The gods who reveal the measurement of time are Shamash, the sun-god, and Sin, the moon-god. The Sumerians early observed that in the course of a year or one complete revolution of the sun, as they thought, round the earth—the moon makes roughly 12 cycles of revolution, and so they divided the year into 12 months. They further observed that the planets in their revolution only occupy a narrow belt in the heavens 23½° broad—the zodiac—and that each month the sun occupied a different place in relation to the fixed stars of the zodiac and so corresponding to the 12 months the zodiac was divided into 12 parts, each being named after a supposed resemblance of the fixed stars in that part to some figure of animal or thing, hence the Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins, etc. The 12 signs of the Zodiac, exactly as we have them, were known to the Babylonians at least as early as the eighth century B.C.

The Babylonians found that the month divided roughly into 30 days, the years thus having 12 × 30 days, 360 days. The day was divided in a fashion exactly similar to the division of the year, having 12 Kaspu or double-hours, each of which was divided into 30 units or periods of 2 minutes. Thus the circle, whether of the year or of the day, was divided into 360 units, and so it remains still—trigonometry the world over recognising 360° in a complete revolution.

360 was apparently chosen, not only as being the multiple of 12, but as being the mean between the lunar year of 354 days and the solar year of 365½ days, so that the number of intercalary days each year should be the same.

Achilles Tatius, the Byzantine, celebrated alike as an historian and profligate, of the fifth century A.D., reports the following tradition regarding the fixing of the units of time and length by the Babylonians. “The Chaldeans undertook to divide up the course of the sun and of the hours, in that they divided the hour (i.e. the double hour, kaspu) into 30 parts at the time of the equinox and fixed on this thirtieth part to be the unit of the measure of time. They also declared that the sun went with the speed of an average man and that its course in the hour contained 30 such units.” Modern research into Babylonian astronomical tablets, especially by Dr. Craig, has entirely confirmed these statements of Tatius. Thus 1/360 of the daily cycle of the sun or a period of two minutes became the unit of time.

The unit measure of length, as Tatius also remarks, is derived from the measure of time. It is the distance the sun, travelling as they thought with the speed of an average man, would progress in the heavens in unit time. The Greek unit of length, the stadion, 202 English yards, similarly is the distance a man could walk in two minutes. So, also, the larger unit of length of the Babylonians (kaspu) is the distance an average man will walk in a double hour (kaspu). This still survives in the Russian league and the German mile, these both being supposititiously the distance a man could walk in one double hour.

In order to obtain that correspondence between sun and moon that the Babylonian astronomer felt to be essential, he divided the year into six double months corresponding to the double hours, each having 60 days. These double months of 60 days were divided like the year into 12 parts or lunar weeks of five days each. Thus each lunar week contained 60 kaspu or double hours, keeping up a numerical analogy which the Babylonian thought to be divine. Six such lunar weeks = one month.

It is interesting to note that the double month of 60 days is still a method of reckoning time used by Arabs and Indians. The naming of the months in the Roman Calendar seems to point to a similar mode of reckoning time having been in vogue in Rome in the earliest times, for, whereas the first six months, January to June, have all special names, from July onward the months are called simply quinctilis, sextilis, etc. The six months with special names probably therefore were originally double months into which the year was divided. Correspondingly, the day was divided among Semitic peoples into six parts, Morning, Noon and Evening, and the three Watches of the Night, a division of the day constantly used both in N.T. and O.T.

From these divisions of time the Sumero-Babylonians obtained their numerical notation and so laid the foundation of Babylonian arithmetic. Originally, as we have seen, they had a decimal system as we have, but since 60 was the number of days in a double month, and likewise the number of kaspu or double hours in the five-day week, and as it was ⅙ part of the complete revolution of 360, the Sumerians superimposed a sexagesimal system upon the earlier decimal system, taking 60 as a unit, so that their base numbers were 1, 60, and 3600, i.e. 602. In later Semitic Babylonian usage the decimal and sexagesimal systems are combined, so that the basal numbers in use are now five, viz. 1, 10, 60, 600, and 3600. All other numbers are represented in writing by combinations and repetitions of the signs for these five numbers (e.g. 22 is represented by two tens and two unit signs).

In the calendar 60 was always divided by 5 and 12, there being 12 weeks of five days each in a double month and five days of 12 hours each in a five-day week. So 5 and 12 also become key numbers in the Babylonian number system. Thus five is the number of the planets, without the sun and moon, and it was only in later Babylonian times when sun worship (Marduk worship) gained the supremacy over moon worship (Sin worship) that seven planets were reckoned—sun and moon being added—and the seven-day week was substituted for the five-day week. Hence seven became the perfect and sacred number of the Semitic peoples.

At a later period of Babylonian history the zodiac was divided into 24 instead of 12 parts, each sign being divided into two, corresponding to the waxing and waning of the moon in each month. And by the law of analogies that governed all Babylonian mathematical ideas, the day became divided into 24 one hour divisions instead of the 12 double hours as formerly.

The division of the day into 12 hours (not 24), Herodotus tells us (ii. 108), the Greeks learned from the Babylonians, and this division still survives in the numbering of a watch face up to 12. The reckoning of the minute hand as passing through 5/60 of an hour in one space between two numbers also shows Babylonian influence. So also the sexagesimal system survives in 60 minutes in one hour and 60 seconds in one minute, and in the French numerical system soixante, soixantedix, etc.

The influence of the Babylonian sexagesimal system is seen not only in our divisions of time but in most of our weights and measures. Counting by the dozen and the gross is quite anomalous in our decimal system, but it apparently owes its origin to 12 being one of the base numbers of the Sumerians. So also 12 pence in a shilling and the German 12 pf. in a Groschen.

The Pythagoreans borrowed their ideas of the symbolism of number and of divine harmonies from the Chaldeans as Pythagoras himself acknowledges, and these philosophers thus transmitted the mathematical knowledge of the ancient Sumerians to all Europe.

A very considerable change in the Babylonian calendar was wrought by the substitution of the seven-day week for the five-day week. This seven-day week has come down to us from the Hebrews and the Romans. The exact time of the change in Babylonian chronology has not been precisely determined, but the rise of the seven-day week must have coincided with the change to the primacy of the sun-god Shamash in the Pantheon from that of the moon-god Sin. With the rise in importance of Babylon and Sippar and the decline of the dynasty of Ur, Shamash and Marduk became supreme and therefore at least as early a date as 2500 B.C. is indicated for the use of a seven-day week in Babylon itself.

Each day of the week was called after one of the seven planets, which governed it, as the names of the days of the week clearly show, Sunday, Monday (or Lundi), Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Saturday.

Following the analogy between the week and the day, each hour of the day belongs to one of the seven planets, which governs that hour. The order of the planets, as ruling over the hours, begins with Saturn, which has the longest period, and ends with the moon, which has the shortest. Thus the first hour belongs to Saturn, the second to Jupiter and so on, the seventh to the moon, the eighth again to Saturn, down to the twenty- fourth, which belongs to Mars. The next day makes no break in the cyclic order, so that the first hour of the next day belongs to the sun. Each day was named after the planet to which its first hour belonged. Hence comes the order of the days of the week as we have them. This is all fully explained in a clay tablet found by Hilprecht at Nippur.

Just as the Babylonians associated each day of the week and each hour of the day with a particular planet, so by the law of analogies the years themselves were arranged in cycles of seven, each year having a planetary deity associated with it. Thus in the Priestly Code of the Mosaic Law we have the Sabbath of the seventh year corresponding to the Sabbath of the seventh day and having similar characteristics (Lev. xxv. 1-7). So also the year of jubilee of the Hebrews had its counterpart in the Babylonian calendar, which recognised a week of years, or 49 years as a completed cycle and therefore a divine harmony. The odd year, the fiftieth year, was regarded (as by the Hebrews, Lev. xxv. 8 ff.) as a specially sacred time, just as the intercalary days at the Babylonian New Year were particularly associated with religion. The end of 100 years or the completion of two cycles of 50 was regarded also by the Babylonians with special reverence. Indications of these conceptions are found in the Code of Hammurabi.

The following observations on the use of “round numbers” in cuneiform inscriptions and documents are derived from my own investigations. Numbers in Sumerian documents seem always to have been used in an exact mathematical sense. The parallel trilingual inscriptions on the rock of Behistun supply an instructive contrast with one another. In the Babylonian version “round numbers” are used nine times in giving the numbers of killed and captive enemies. In the Persian and Susian versions there is not one case of such numbers, expressions like “many,” “a multitude,” etc., being used instead. In the cuneiform account of the campaign of Tiglath Pileser I there are thirteen cases of the use of numbers, of which only one is (formally) precise. In seven of the thirteen cases the round number is a multiple of sixty (30, 60, 120, 180, 300, 1200, 6000). In the remaining five the numbers belong to the decimal series (5, 50, etc.).

In the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser II there are twenty-eight cases of the use of numbers. Of these nine are round numbers belonging to the sexagesimal system, fourteen are round numbers in the decimal system and only five are (formally) exact numbers. In the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II eight numbers occur, of which five are round numbers of the decimal system and three are exact numbers. In the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar I have found eighteen occurrences of round numbers, all multiples of ten, five of them being also multiples in the sexagesimal system.

Perhaps in late Babylonian history numbers of the decimal system increasingly took the place of numbers of the sexagesimal system in popular usage.

A correspondence may be noted between the points chosen for the beginnings of years and days respectively. A New Year beginning with the winter solstice corresponds to a day beginning at midnight. A year beginning in autumn corresponds to a day beginning at sunset. A year beginning at the spring equinox corresponds to a day beginning at sunrise. All these coincidences illustrate the over-ruling Babylonian law of analogy between the divisions of the year and the day.

The Sumero-Babylonian year of 360 days was fitted into the solar year by the addition of five days, made annually at the New Year festival and not reckoned as part of any month. Every fourth year a sixth day was added and so an average of 365¼ days was maintained. The normal year of the Babylonians was divided into 72 weeks of five days each. Corresponding to the double hour and the double month there was also a double year of 144 weeks. After the adoption of the seven-day week, the so-called Metonic cycle was introduced. This cycle takes its name from the archon Meton, who introduced it into Athens in 434 B.C., although it was used much earlier by the Babylonians. In this system the months contain 29 and 30 days alternately and there is a leap-year of 13 months. The whole system revolves in a cycle of nineteen years. The thirteenth (leap-year) month was not under the regency of any planetary deity, a peculiarity that has probably given rise to the widespread superstition of the unluckiness of the number thirteen.
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Kings and Prophets

Post #3

Post by Difflugia »

This is a table of the kings and prophets of Judah and Israel according to the Bible. I adapted it from this table in the 1880 book, Curiosities of the Bible. I still refer to it myself, so I thought it might be useful to someone else.

Year B.C.King of JudahKing of IsraelProphet
1095SaulSaulSamuel
1055DavidIshbaal
1048David
1034Nathan
1015SolomonSolomon
975RehoboamJereboam IAhijah; Shemaiah
958Abijah
955AsaAzariah son of Oded (2Ch 15)
954Nadab
953BaashaHanani
930ElahJehu
929Zimri; Omri
918Ahab
914JehoshaphatMicaiah
910Elijah
897Ahaziah
896JehoramElisha; Jahaziel
892Jehoram
885Ahaziah
884AthaliahJehuJehoiada
878Joash
857Jehoahaz
856Jonah
839AmaziahJehoash
825Jeroboam II
810Uzziah (Azariah)Amos
784AnarchyHosea
773ZechariahJoel
772Shallum; Menahem
761PekahiahIsaiah
759Pekah
758JothamMicah
742AhazOded
730Hoshea
726Hezekiah
721Assyrian Captivity
720Nahum
698Manasseh
643Amon
641Josiah
640Zephaniah
628Jeremiah
612Habakkuk
610Jehoahaz
610Jehoiakim
606Daniel
599Jehoiachin
599Zedekiah
595Ezekiel
588Babylonian CaptivityObadiah
538Cyrus of Persia
520ArtaxerxesHaggai; Zechariah
457Ezra
426Malachi
445Nehemiah
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Introduction to Winnie the Pooh

Post #4

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For comparison with Luke's Gospel, here is the introduction to Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne:

If you happen to have read another book about Christopher Robin, you may remember that he once had a swan (or the swan had Christopher Robin, I don’t know which) and that he used to call this swan Pooh. That was a long time ago, and when we said good-bye, we took the name with us, as we didn’t think the swan would want it any more. Well, when Edward Bear said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh. And he was. So, as I have explained the Pooh part, I will now explain the rest of it.

You can’t be in London for long without going to the Zoo. There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there. So when Christopher Robin goes to the Zoo, he goes to where the Polar Bears are, and he whispers something to the third keeper from the left, and doors are unlocked, and we wander through dark passages and up steep stairs, until at last we come to the special cage, and the cage is opened, and out trots something brown and furry, and with a happy cry of “Oh, Bear!” Christopher Robin rushes into its arms. Now this bear’s name is Winnie, which shows what a good name for bears it is, but the funny thing is that we can’t remember whether Winnie is called after Pooh, or Pooh after Winnie. We did know once, but we have forgotten...

I had written as far as this when Piglet looked up and said in his squeaky voice, “What about Me?” “My dear Piglet,” I said, “the whole book is about you.” “So it is about Pooh,” he squeaked. You see what it is. He is jealous because he thinks Pooh is having a Grand Introduction all to himself. Pooh is the favourite, of course, there’s no denying it, but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because you can’t take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comforting to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot, and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn’t mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.

And now all the others are saying, “What about Us?” So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.
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Foreword to A Princess of Mars

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The foreword to Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars:
____

To the Reader of this Work:

In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.

My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack.

He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of the world. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod.

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel grey, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often heard my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning, and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way. He was, when others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his manuscript years afterward.

He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied. As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them at all.

He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York, where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited him once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York market—my father and I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed he was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this manuscript.

He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he wished me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a compartment in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I would find his will there and some personal instructions which he had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal. I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never had understood that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to come to him at once. I had always been his favourite among the younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to drive me out to Captain Carter's he replied that if I was a friend of the Captain's he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman attached to an adjoining property.

For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to his place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body and of his affairs.

I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study. The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it. It lay, he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when he showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical one where I had seen him on those other nights, with his arms raised in supplication to the skies.

There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of death from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told me I would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar indeed, but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was able.

He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming, and that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he previously had had constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated. The instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this was carried out just as he directed, even in secrecy if necessary.

His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after his death.

A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring lock which can be opened only from the inside.

Yours very sincerely,
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
My pronouns are he, him, and his.

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