the Babylonian cosmology would seem to have represented the earth
as a circular plane surrounded by a great circular river, beyond
which rose an impregnable barrier of mountains, and resting upon
an infinite sea of waters. The material vault of the heavens was
supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains.
But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution
of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the
Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would
appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians,
despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena
of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception of
the cosmos was attainable. We shall see in due course by what
faltering steps the European imagination advanced from the crude
ideas of Egypt and Babylonia to the relatively clear vision of
Newton and Laplace.


CHALDEAN MAGIC

We turn now from the field of the astrologer to the closely
allied province of Chaldean magic--a province which includes the
other; which, indeed, is so all- encompassing as scarcely to
leave any phase of Babylonian thought outside its bounds.

The tablets having to do with omens, exorcisms, and the like
magic practices make up an astonishingly large proportion of the
Babylonian records. In viewing them it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that the superstitions which they evidenced absolutely
dominated the life of the Babylonians of every degree. Yet it
must not be forgotten that the greatest inconsistencies