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Ancient Knowledge
Part I: Middle East
Darwin’s Tea Party
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon with Ziggurat of Marduk on the left (artist’s recreation)
Ancient Near Eastern Knowledge
By the end of the
Neolithic period (6,000 ya
or 4,000 BC) conditions
were right for the birth of
civilization.
A Ziggurat – like the pyramids, these public
religious buildings show the advanced science
and technology as well as religious beliefs of
Mesopotamian civilization
This happened first in
the Ancient Near East,
where agriculture had
also appeared 4,000
years earlier.
Ancient Near Eastern Knowledge
• The Ancient Near East includes two major
areas:
Mesopotamia (now mostly in Iraq)
Mesopotamia (now mostly in Iraq)
Egypt (along Nile river)
Ancient Sumer
• Ancient Sumer has been called
the “cradle of civilization”.
• Others claim “history begins at
Sumer”.
• The Sumerians are believed to
be the first culture to develop
writing and built the first large
urban centres.
Ancient Sumer
• The Sumerians
developed
cuneiform writing.
• This is one of the
tablets of the
famous Epic of
Gilgamesh (c. 2000
BC).
Ancient Babylonia
A few hundred years later and a few hundred miles to
the North the civilization of ancient Babylonia with its
capital in the city of Babylon.
Ancient Babylonia
• The Babylonians developed the lunar
calendar, mathematics and
astronomy/astrology.
• These influenced the neighbouring
Egyptian civilization as well as the
ancient Greeks.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• The Babylonians, like
most other civilizations,
built their civilization
along the rich agricultural
river valleys – in this case
the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
Assyrian Star
map
Counterclockwise from bottom:
Sirius (Arrow), Pegasus +
Andromeda (Field + Plough),
[Aries], the Pleiades, Gemini,
Hydra + Corvus + Virgo, Libra.
Drawing by L.W.King with
corrections by J.Koch. Neue
Untersuchungen zut Topographie
des Babilonischen
Fixsternhimmels (Wiesbaden
1989), p. 56ff.
Babylonian numerals
Babylonian number system was based on 60
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• Like other civilizations, the Babylonians
needed to have a reliable calendar and
time-keeping system
• Their mathematics and
astronomy/astrology came out of these
practical needs.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• The calendar could help them predict
when the annual floods would come.
• It could also help establish the dates for
important religious holidays.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• The Babylonians developed a number
system based on 60 (called the
sexagesimal system) whereby:
– 60 seconds = 1 minute
– 60 minutes = 1 hour
– 24 hours (6 X 4) = 1 day
– 360 days (60 X 6) = (1 year)
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• The 360 days of the year corresponded to
the 360 degrees of a perfect circle:
360 degrees
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• This perfect shape was the shape of time – the
time it took the sun to go around the earth!
360 degrees
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
•
And is now the perfectly circular shape of your watch, also based on
the sexagesimal system of 60 and a circular view of time!
12
360 degrees
3
9
6
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• Note how the 360 days don’t add up to a
full year.
• The Babylonians understood that a year
was actually over 365 days and added an
extra month every few years.
• But they were still committed to the perfect
circle view of the time cosmos.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
• Thus they maintained the circular view of
things for “esthetic” reasons and for
“religious” reasons.
• How else would the gods have arranged
things but by perfect circles?
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
They night sky was
divided up into
constellations like this
one – called Cygnus
(the Swan).
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
The Babylonians saw
mythologicaly and
religiously inspired
themes in the jumble of
stars in the night sky.
It’s possible to make your own constellation
out of randomly chosen stars!
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
They also believed the
stars were the abode of
gods and goddesses.
Since observation of the
stars could help in the
prediction of the annual
floods, they also
believed the same
knowledge could predict
the fate of people on the
earth.
And this is how
astrology was born!
Sumerian-Babylonian god of the sun, Utu
(Shamash in Babylonian). Note the rays
emanating from his shoulders and one of his feet
on the mountain of the East which he crosses
daily.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
Symbol of Shamash
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
Babylonian moon god Sin.
Ancient Babylonian
astronomy/astrology
Two images of Ishtar – goddess of love and war – with the evening star (Venus)
representing her.
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
Thus we learn that:
1. Ancient civilizations (like the Babylonian and
Sumerian civilizations) helped advance
science and technology.
2. These sciences were an important part of
their religious and mythological traditions and
not seen as separate from them.
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
In Babylon, for example, the science of
astronomy was thus deeply intertwined with the
religious system of astrology.
But all sciences began this way: they were at first
deeply intertwined with magic, religion and
mythology.
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
Do you know other examples of sciences
originally rooted in magic, religion, mythology?
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
Alchemy was a religious or
magical system which was the
origin of modern chemistry
The “philosopher’s stone” was
supposed to be able to
convert the base metals into
gold and even contain the
secret of immortality.
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
Thus ancient civilizations made no distinction
between what we now call science (or
philosophy) and what we now call religion.
Science (L. scientia, = “to know”, “having
knowledge” Gr. Gnosis = “knowledge”), the body
of knowledge obtained by methods based upon
observation” (L. Fischer)
Religion (L. “religio” = to bind or tie together).
“The belief in an unseen world and that our
greatest good lies in harmoniously adjusting
ourselves hitherto” (Wm. James).
The Nature of Ancient Knowledge
However, one ancient civilization did begin to
distinguish between religious explanations and
scientific explanations (or, philosophical
explanations ) of the world.
End of Ancient Knowledge (Part I)