Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

We have records of observations carried on under Asshurbanapal, who
sent astronomers to different parts to study celestial phenomena. Here
is one:--

To the Director of Observations,--My Lord, his humble servant
Nabushum-iddin, Great Astronomer of Nineveh, writes thus: "May Nabu
and Marduk be propitious to the Director of these Observations, my
Lord. The fifteenth day we observed the Node of the moon, and the moon
was eclipsed."

The Phoenicians are supposed to have used the stars for navigation,
but there are no records. The Egyptian priests tried to keep such
astronomical knowledge as they possessed to themselves. It is probable
that they had arbitrary rules for predicting eclipses. All that was
known to the Greeks about Egyptian science is to be found in the
writings of Diodorus Siculus. But confirmatory and more authentic
facts have been derived from late explorations. Thus we learn from
E. B. Knobel[2] about the Jewish calendar dates, on records of land
sales in Aramaic papyri at Assuan, translated by Professor A. H. Sayce
and A. E. Cowley, (1) that the lunar cycle of nineteen years was used
by the Jews in the fifth century B.C. [the present reformed Jewish
calendar dating from the fourth century A.D.], a date a "little more
than a century after the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those
whose business is recorded had fled into Egypt with Jeremiah" (Sayce);
and (2) that the order of intercalation at that time was not
dissimilar to that in use at the present day.

Then again, Knobel reminds us of "the most interesting discovery a few