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Abstract

DR. KRICHENBAUER believes that he has discovered a new key to ancient mythology. With the help of the Iliad and Odyssey, the gods of Greece are resolved into stars and constellations, and the facts of astronomy are made to explain their nature and attributes, as well as the myths that were told of them. In the deities of Egypt, of Babylonia, of India, and of Iran, Dr. Krichen bauer finds fresh confirmations of his views. The development of this early astronomical theogony falls into two periods, the first period being one of creation and growth, the second of fixity and nationalisation. The first period has its “climacteric” in B.C. 2110, when the Ram already ushered in the year. But its real history belongs to that earlier age when the Bull took the place of the Ram, and it is the Bull, accordingly, which stands at the head of the religious system, and breaks in sunder the egg of the universe. The second period begins with the change of the summer solstice from the Lion to the Crab in conse quence of the precession of the equinoxes, and thus falls about 1462 B.C., when the commencement of the year was transferred from the summer solstice to the vernal equinox. The equal division of the path of the sun into the twelve signs of the Zodiac took place about seven centuries later. This, briefly put, is the substance of Dr. Krichenbauer's work. His interpretation, however, of the passages of Homer upon which his theory is based, is purely subjective, and is not likely to commend itself to others. Homeric scholars, at any rate, will not admit that any portion of the Iliad or Odyssey is anything like so old as he would make them, or can contain traditions of anything like so old a period. His acquaintance, again, with the facts that modern research has recovered from the monuments of Egypt and Babylonia, is of the most meagre kind. Hence he is quite unaware that we happen to know a good deal about ancient Babylonian astronomy, and the history of the Zodiacal signs, as has lately been pointed out in NATURE, and that what we know is altogether inconsistent with his statements and conclusions. Thus the year began with the vernal equinox, and the heaven was divided into twelve equal portions at least as early as B.C. 2000, and probably much earlier, while it was in Babylonia that the constellations and Zodiacal signs were first named. On the other hand, there was not the remotest connection between the theology and mythology of Babylonia and Egypt. Before Dr. Krichenbauer again writes on this subject it would be advisable for him to be better acquainted with the results of modern Oriental research.