mentioned the series which was commonly called 'the Day of Bel,'
and which was decreed by the learned to have been written in the
time of the great Sargon I., king of Agade, 3800 B.C. With such
ancient works as these to guide them, the profession of deducing
omens from daily events reached such a pitch of importance in the
last Assyrian Empire that a system of making periodical reports
came into being. By these the king was informed of all the
occurrences in the heavens and on earth, and the results of
astrological studies in respect to after events. The heads of the
astrological profession were men of high rank and position, and
their office was hereditary. The variety of information contained
in these reports is best gathered from the fact that they were
sent from cities as far removed from each other as Assur in the
north and Erech in the south, and it can only be assumed that
they were despatched by runners, or men mounted on swift horses.
As reports also came from Dilbat, Kutba, Nippur, and Bursippa,
all cities of ancient foundation, the king was probably well
acquainted with the general course of events in his empire."[12]

From certain passages in the astrological tablets, Thompson draws
the interesting conclusion that the Chaldean astronomers were
acquainted with some kind of a machine for reckoning time. He
finds in one of the tablets a phrase which he interprets to mean
measure-governor, and he infers from this the existence of a kind
of a calculator. He calls attention also to the fact that Sextus
Empiricus[13] states that the clepsydra was known to the
Chaldeans, and that Herodotus asserts that the Greeks borrowed
certain measures of time from the Babylonians. He finds further
corroboration in the fact that the Babylonians had a time-measure
by which they divided the day and the night; a measure called