volume 2

(Iprefdce.
Since the year 1865, when the late Rev. Edward
Hincks, one of the early pioneers of the science of
Assyriology, first made known to the world the
existence of Assyrian tablets inscribed with texts
relating partly to astrology and partly to what we now
call astronomy, students have devoted much time to
the investigation of this class of documents. Prof.
Lenormant still
Jules Oppert and the late Francois
further advanced our knowledoe of astrolog^ical and
other cognate texts in a series of learned papers, but
it was not until the publication of Prof. Sayce's paper,
entitled
" The Astronomy and Astrology of the
Babylonians," that any very considerable progress was
made in this difficult branch of Assyriology. It is
true that the cuneiform texts which formed the base
of this work had already been published by Sir Henry
Rawlinson in the third volume of the " Cuneiform
Inscriptions of Western Asia," but Prof. Sayce was
the first to show the general drift and meaning of
their contents, and to enable us to appreciate the
accuracy of the traditions of Greek and Roman writers
on Babylonian astrology and astronomy.