The Destinies of the Stars. Svante Arrhenius
units to one of 365 days was a step exceedingly difficult for the primitive peoples to take.
Thousands of years elapsed before the most intelligent among the races established the length of the solar year. Those who lived in regions where the Sun’s altitude notably changes, i.e. far from the equator, undoubtedly reckoned time in years, without knowing its length expressed in days. Imagine a nomadic tribe like the Lapps in the north of Sweden. In the autumn their reindeer wander down toward the coast in search of food and the Lapps go with them. In spring the reindeer lead their masters back again to the mountains. It cannot very well escape the observation of these nomads that the Sun shines almost continuously during their stay in the uplands while dreary night reigns nearly without interruption during their sojourn in the lowlands. They are obviously forced to co-ordinate the beautiful summer with the duration of sunlight. To them, therefore, the Sun’s extraordinary great importance to life is unquestionable. The same holds true about all people who live sufficiently far from the equator. As a consequence, they become Sun-worshippers. It is not difficult to find examples of peoples who have worshipped the Sun; only a few of the more important ones will be mentioned here.
The people of the bronze age here in the North were zealous Sun-worshippers thousands of years ago, as the many relics from this period, and particularly the rock-carvings, bear witness. The Celts of Western Europe have frequently symbolized the Sun as a cross, while the worship of Moon and stars seems to have been foreign to them as well as to the bronze-age people of the North. The Jewish Samson (Simson) was a Sun-hero, the name being related to the Babylonian Shamash, the Sun-god. In Hesiodos’ cosmogony the Sun (Helios) is mentioned before the Moon (Selene). The old Germans worshipped both Sun and Moon, particularly the former. The Slavs possessed a Sun-god Dazbogu, but no deity identified with the Moon. Similar conditions obtained among the Finnish forefathers. The Chinese Tao-priests light fires during the vernal equinox as we do at Walpurgis and midsummer, and they sacrifice rice and salt to the flames. “This is a remnant of the Sun-cult,” says Solomon Reinach, from whom these data in regard to Sun-worship principally are taken. In Japan, the Moon is of male sex, the Sun of female sex, which indicates that there, as with the Australian negroes, the Moon was originally considered more important than the Sun. Nevertheless the Japanese are now Sun-worshippers; the Sun is placed as emblem of the most high in their flag and the Mikado is known to trace his lineage from the Sun. They have, therefore, long ago passed from Moon-cult to Sun-cult. It is probable that this step was taken even earlier in China, where the Sun furthermore is of male sex. With growing civilization all people learn to understand, as have the Japanese, the superior importance of the Sun. The Incas of Peru, who reached a very high grade of culture, were sun-worshippers and called themselves children of the Sun, although they lived near the equator where the Moon-cult, as we presently shall see, owns its most faithful adherents.
In the neighbourhood of the equator, winter and summer differ very slightly with respect to temperature and altitude of the Sun. Rather, it is the alternation of humid and dry seasons that is of deciding importance. No sheet of snow covers the ground in winter-time, kills the vegetation, or decimates the supply of nourishment for animals and men. Indeed, contrary to our experience, a suppression of growth often accompanies a high altitude of the Sun due to the drought which simultaneously occurs. The altitude and luminosity of the Sun change altogether too slightly in the course of the year to attract the attention of primitive man. The light of the Moon, on the other hand, varies from full intensity to nothing and this takes place in periods so short that memory has no time to forget the cycle. Even the low-standing Australian negroes utilize the phases of the Moon to denote remote times. Chronometry in any true sense they do not possess, unable as they are to state the number of days in a month. How much more fortunate the peoples who could count to ten or better yet to twenty and thus were able to use the single or the double decade as a measure of time. For them it was easy to determine the time between two successive phases of the Moon, seven and a half days apart.
The truth once grasped that four phases separate two new Moons the important bridge could be established between the short measure, a day, and the longer measure, a month. The latter was then found to be nearly thirty times longer than the former. On a higher stage of culture, it was discovered that this ratio was not exact and the discrepancy must greatly have puzzled the people. The correct ratio is 29.53. At all events the periodic return of full Moon and new Moon proved the most reliable measure of time within their experience. This was something entirely different from the irregular occurrences of earthquakes, storms, lightning, and floods, not to mention the ravages of beasts and foes. Spaces of time that hitherto appeared boundless could be surveyed and computed. The idea of eternity dawned for the first time on humanity. The Moon was the great master, measurer of all. In Sanskrit the Moon’s name is Mâs, i.e. measurer, and “mensis” (Lat. month) is closely related to “mensura” (Lat. measure).
With peoples who did not live too far from the equator, the Moon, therefore, took precedence of the Sun. Among the Mexicans existed, long ago, a peculiar unit for measuring long periods of time, called “tonalamatl,” comprising 260 days. It was undoubtedly intended to contain nine synodical months (reckoned from new Moon to new Moon). But such a period would consist of 265.58 days and so could not be made to agree with the double decade and was therefore shortened to 260 days, as we round off the solar year, in reality 365.24 days, to an even 365 days. Elaborate studies have been made in order to explain why the Mexicans chose nine synodical months instead of twelve, as most other peoples, but the question has not been solved. This much is certain, that “tonalamatl” has nothing to do with the solar year, but only with the month. The high age of “tonalamatl” is proved by the fact that the priests adhered to it in magic and horoscope casting long after the solar year came into public use. A learned Mexican, de Jonghe, has pointed out that “tonalamatl” was used by all the tribes belonging to the Nahua-group, which tribes separated very long ago. This unit of time, therefore, bears all the evidence of a very high age, but is obviously younger than the synodical month.
Our information in regard to Moon-worship among the peoples of Mesopotamia is even more explicit. The Moon (Sin) was rendered homage far earlier than the Sun (Shamash). The following translation of a hymn in cuneiform letters I quote from L. Bergström, who published a study on “Semitic Moon-Worship” in Nordisk Tidskrift, 1909:
Oh, Sin, thou who alone givest light,
Thou, who bringest light to men,
Thou, who showest favour to the dark-tressed ones,
Thy light shines on the firmament,
Thy torch illuminates like fire,
Thy radiance fills the wide earth.
Oh, heavenly Anu, whose insight and wisdom no one comprehends,
Thy light is splendid as Shamash, thy firstborn,
Before thee prostrate the great gods themselves in the dust
For on thee rests the fate of the world.
Anu was god of the heaven and seems here to stand for god in general. Sin was father to the daughter Shamash, who in this hymn already is considered almost comparable to the father. Later on during the Hammurabi-dynasty (about 2000 B.C.) the Sun, Shamash, was accepted as supreme god, but the Moon remained the regulator of time for religious purposes. For astrological forecasts the priests preferred to use the Moon, and the “signs” in the Moon were the most important. This is true of astrological prophecies also at the time of Tycho Brahe. “Oh, Sin, thou tellest the oracles to the gods who pray them of thee,” reads an incantation. From Babylon, the heart of civilization, Moon-worship spread to Arabs and other Semites, and with the Hebrews, as Bergström remarks, the Moon originally played a far greater part than the Sun, although at the time of Christ the condition was reversed. Nevertheless, the Moon has still retained its position as chronographer in the Church Calendar. In Psalms 104:19 we read: “He appointed the Moon for seasons.”
In general, we have built on the belief that the stellar bodies made an impression on men by virtue of the light they radiate and it has therefore been difficult to explain why the Moon ranked above the Sun. It is frequently said that the Sun (in Babylonia) was considered an enemy of mankind as its heat destroyed the vegetation. (It is true that a period