The Human Cosmos. Jo Marchant

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ at the University of Wales, puts it: ‘a system that is dislocated from its cosmology’. For many scientists, it’s a threat that needs stamping out. In the UK, celebrity physicist Brian Cox has described astrology as ‘undermining the very fabric of our civilisation’, while biologist and sceptic Richard Dawkins complains that it is ‘shrivelling and cheapening the universe’.

      And yet despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of scientific support, the interest in zodiac signs and horoscopes persists. In fact, astrology is now reportedly rising in credibility and popularity, particularly among millennials seeking guidance, escape and even ambiguity in a stressful, ultra-rational world. Astronomy and astrology might seem complete opposites, even enemies. But in a way they are twins, reflecting two essential sides of our nature, and born of the same fundamental human desire to see patterns, order and meaning in the sky.

       •

      In February 323 BC, Alexander once again approached Babylon with his army. The city’s envoys included an astronomer-priest, Bel-apla-iddina, who warned him that, according to the celestial omens, his life was in danger if he entered the city. The details given by different ancient writers vary: according to one, the priest advised that Alexander should approach Babylon facing east, to avoid catching sight of the setting sun. But the marshy terrain was too difficult for his troops, so the king turned back, and arrived facing westwards after all.

      Once in Babylon, Alexander made plans for his next military campaigns – he wanted to attack Arabia in the south, Carthage and Italy in the west. Several Greek and Roman writers recount a story that in May that year, while the king was away from his throne – Diodorus says he went for a massage; Plutarch says he was exercising – an escaped prisoner entered the palace, crowned himself and sat on the empty chair. Alexander’s Babylonian advisers told him to put the man to death. The classical authors seem mystified by this strange event. But recent scholars have suggested that the priests, concerned for Alexander’s life, may have tried to enact the substitute king ritual to save him.

      A few weeks later, Alexander attended a drinking party and afterwards fell seriously ill. An astronomical diary for the evening of 11 June 323 BC is the only contemporary record of what happened next. ‘The king died,’ wrote the scribe. ‘Clouds.’

      Aged just thirty-three, the career of one of the world’s greatest generals was over and the city’s fate was sealed. Alexander had made Babylon his capital, and was rebuilding Marduk’s temple and the Etemenanki tower. But after his death, his kingdom was split between his generals. Seleucos, who took Mesopotamia, built himself a new capital and forced Babylon’s citizens to move there. Only the priests stayed, diligently recording their nightly observations in the abandoned city.

      The region was next conquered in 125 BC by the Parthians from modern-day Iran, and shortly afterwards was subsumed into the Roman Empire. Within a few centuries, Babylon, like the great cities of Nineveh and Uruk, lay buried under the sand, forgotten until the nineteenth-century exploits of Layard and Rassam. It was the end of humanity’s first civilisation, a flourishing of armies and empires, temples and towers, myths and magic, which created many of the foundations from which our own society is built. Its dying breath – the very last cuneiform tablets ever found – date from the first century AD. They are astronomical almanacs, forecasting future events in the sky.

      As far as we can tell, people have recognised star constellations and followed the annual cycles of the sun, moon and stars as far back as the Palaeolithic. By the Neolithic, they were starting to shape their cosmos, building monuments to create and capture key moments and effects. But the ability to keep written records – and the administrative system that writing supported – offered the opportunity to vastly extend that control. In a centuries-long effort, the Babylonians transformed a wandering, whimsical sky, plaything of the gods, into a predictable, mathematical universe.

      Many civilisations through history have developed mathematical models to describe the sky. Chinese emperors employed teams of astronomers to draw up sky maps and predict events such as eclipses. The Mayans, whose leaders associated themselves with heavenly bodies, counted celestial cycles that lasted millions of years. But the scribes of Enuma Anu Enlil were the first we know of to move from an analogue cosmos to a digital one; the first to swap the messy complexity of reality for the simplicity and power of numbers.

      1 Mesopotamia, from the Greek for ‘land between the rivers’, stretched from southern Turkey down to the Persian Gulf.

      2 Rassam and Layard didn’t record where they found the different tablets, and the crates became mixed up further after arrival in London, so they are all now treated as one collection.

      3 As at Nineveh, the find-spots of these tablets weren’t recorded, and many of them were damaged during recovery and transport. By the time the German team started work, barely any clay tablets were left.

      4 Its first appearance before sunset and last appearance before sunrise.

      5 This is because Earth and the other planets are all orbiting the sun. Mercury and Venus are closer to the sun, so they always appear close to it in the sky. When they move behind the sun (as seen from Earth) they appear to be going backwards. The other planets (Mars, Saturn, Jupiter) are further from the sun than we are, so sometimes we overtake them on the inside.

      6 Rather than tracking celestial bodies through the zodiac, the priests were most interested in computing the times and positions of key events – such as a new moon or lunar eclipse, or the moment at which a planet stops or changes direction – as these were what triggered omen predictions.

      7 Researchers are still finding surprises in the tablets. In 2016, historian Mathieu Ossendrijver found that the priests were using geometric techniques in their astronomy too. He reported a Babylonian tablet that recorded a calculation of the distance Jupiter had travelled using a method equivalent to plotting its velocity against time and then calculating the area under the graph. This method was previously thought to have been invented by European astronomers in the fourteenth century AD.

      8 Instead of a decimal number system, the Babylonians used a sexagesimal system with sixty as its base (as we still use for degrees and time today). Both the Babylonians and Hipparchus used exactly the same figure of 29;31,50,8,20 days, which converts to 29.5306 days (29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes). The modern value is also 29.5306 days.

      4

      FAITH

      On 28 October 312, two armies clashed just outside Rome. Two brothers-in-law, Maxentius and Constantine, were fighting for control of the western Roman Empire, which stretched from Britain to north Africa. Maxentius held Rome, while Constantine advanced across the Alps from Gaul. On the eve of the battle, he set up camp a few kilometres north of the city walls.

      What happened to Constantine that day, described by ancient authors such as Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, has acquired legendary status as one of history’s great turning points. At around noon, the power-hungry emperor saw a divine vision: a flaming cross of light above the sun, emblazoned with the words ‘Conquer by this’. It was enough to convert Constantine from paganism to Christianity. He ordered the sign – made from the first two letters of Christ’s name, Chi and Rho, superimposed – to be painted on his soldiers’ shields.

      Maxentius, meanwhile, claimed protection from Mars, the Roman god of war. Rattled by his rival’s military victories, Maxentius had tried everything he could think of to halt Constantine’s progress, from conducting temple rituals and sacrifices to reading animal entrails and omens in the sky. He prepared for a siege behind the capital’s impregnable walls, stockpiling grain and destroying the stone arches of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine’s route across the Tiber into Rome. But he wasn’t sure СКАЧАТЬ