Note 357 — Chapter III · THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM

See the tablets made for this king and published by Sir Henry Rawlinson in the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. III. Many of these are translated by Sayce in “The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylonians,” Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. vol. III. (1874), pp. 145-339. I have taken the lowest date for Sargon, on the authority of Mr King, Chronicles of Early Babylonian Kings, 1907, I. p. 17, although the well-known text of Nabonidus would make him a thousand years earlier. The origin of Babylonian astronomy is discussed by Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, chap. XXIII. The immense antiquity attributed to the Babylonian observations by the classical authorities quoted in Sayce’s paper may be considerably reduced if we substitute lunar for solar years; yet there seems little doubt that the star worship which arose from them went back to the “oldest period of Babylonia.” Cf. Sayce, Gifford Lectures, 1902, p. 480.