Origins of Comets = Origin of Astrology

[Laura]

From "The Origin of Comets by M.E. Bailey, S.V.M. Clube and W.M. Napier, astronomers/astrophysicists.

1
Introduction

"Time and pains will discover what is now unknown and posterity wonder that we did not know such plain things." Seneca.


The problem of the origin of comets is one of the oldest un-solved mysteries in astronomy, with roots pre-dating the ancient Greeks, reaching almost to the dawn of civilization. Comets are also amongst the most primitive astronomical bodies, and the question of their origin is inextricably linked with problems of cosmogony, the formation of stars and the birth of the solar system.

The story of Man's understanding of comets, therefore, is not only associated with the oldest known speculations in natural science and cosmology but also extends to include some of the most recent advances in astrophysics. It makes an excellent backdrop against which to view the development of modern astronomical ideas and concepts, though at times the many interweaving threads of argument may seem rather tangled. In this monograph we attempt to lead the reader through the resulting maze of theory and hypothesis, explaining ideas on comets and their origin from the earliest times right up to the present day.

Advancement of the subject has been closely allied to progress in other fields of astronomy, giving a survey of cometary origins considerable historical interest. Even regarded as a mere instance in the zigzag progression of scientific ideas, the origin of comets soon shows a depth and complexity rarely approached by other individual subjects.

In order to highlight these links with other fields, and to illustrate the apparently perverse back-tracking and retracing of paths that are so often the rule in the progress of science, we have presented the story wherever possible in chronological order. Following this course we hope that the reader may better appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments about comets which were promoted and believed by leading astronomers and philosophers of the past. The fact that these past arguments have frequently been proved false, or at best only half-true, suggests that the currently accepted picture may even now be largely incomplete.

Although the question of the nature and origin of comets has played an important role in the development of astronomical ideas, the rapid advances made during the present century in new areas of astrophysics — stellar, galactic and extragalactic - have combined almost to overwhelm the traditional disciplines which previously dominated the field. This has been especially true of solar system and cometary astronomy, and it is only in the last decade or so, with the advent of space technology and the launching of vehicles to other planets, that interest in comets and their origin has once again come to the fore.

Indeed, the relative decline of cometary astronomy during this century has been so great that many astronomers nowadays have grown up believing not only that comets are amongst the smallest bodies in the universe but also that they are among the least significant. Popular accounts often seem to mention them only to introduce some disparaging remark about the fear and concern that comets used to arouse among our ancestors, while more serious commentators frequently place them at the end of a book or chapter, seeing them, all too clearly, as merely of secondary interest. Indeed, the problem of the origin of comets is sometimes scarcely mentioned! Given that cosmology and astrophysics are now virtually inseparable, this feeling about the status of comets has inevitably become part of the modern world-view, with an associated tendency to self-perpetuation.

However, the mass of material in comets, setting aside hydrogen and helium, is now believed to be similar to that in stars; but because it is not readily apparent it is not generally reckoned with. Likewise, because the more massive representatives of the cometary flux are not often seen, we tend to ignore both their existence and possible effects on terrestrial evolution. In this way, we may obtain a very distorted image of the importance of comets, including, for example, their potential significance for theories of geological and biological evolution, and for a proper understanding of recorded history. These are weighty issues, and one is bound to ask whether astronomical science has yet produced a balanced view of the origin of comets and their association with the earth.

Indeed, these possible blind spots in modern cometary science have interesting parallels in modern galactic astronomy, where progress is now continually hampered by a lack of knowledge concerning the nature and origin of the unseen 'dark matter'. This too, excusing the pun, is a weighty issue, and it is an interesting speculation whether a solution to all these pressing problems in modern astrophysics will turn out to have major aspects in common. If so, there would be no doubt as to the fundamental importance of cometary studies for cosmology and astrophysics.

For these and many other reasons, not least the arrival of the space age, recent years have seen a resurgence of activity in cometary astronomy. This culminated in 1986, with a rendezvous of Soviet, Japanese and European space probes with Halley's comet. From these we learned, for example, that the activity on the surface of a cometary nucleus is confined to a number of small areas where gas and dust emerge in narrow jets before spreading into the coma and tail (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In fact, it seems from the evidence of the jets that comets may be rather porous, low-density bodies, and therefore fragile, whilst their surfaces are more or less asteroidal in appearance. Such findings now provide a firmer foundation on which to base our understanding of how cometary tails are produced and how they evolve under the influence of the solar wind and radiation pressure. But despite these achievements telling us about the appearance and behaviour of observed comets, the question of their origin — whence they come and how they are formed — has proved much harder to resolve.

Nevertheless, this branch of the subject is now also undergoing rapid progress, and important new arguments have recently been advanced which are leading to a complete reappraisal of the previously accepted picture of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Some of these arguments even hint at a general malaise with the whole concept of a 'primordial' comet cloud, however familiar it may be, suggesting perhaps that the competing idea of an interstellar origin for comets might now have to be taken seriously. An account of these developments is therefore timely, especially considering the part played by Halley's comet in the history of the subject, while this most famous comet is yet fresh in our minds, still influencing the cometary debate worldwide.

 

[Laura]

Babylonian beginning

"Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are!" Jane Taylor.

2.1 First steps

2.1.1 BIRTH OF ASTRONOMY

The ancient land of Shinar, including much of what is now modern Iraq, comprised the vast alluvial plains between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Systematic astronomy seems first to have originated here during the third millennium BC (cf. Neugebauer 1945), while the same region, around 2000 BC, is also associated with the conception and drawing of the first constellation maps of the sky (Roy 1984). These maps continued in use unchanged for the subsequent one or two thousand years, possibly becoming more widely known through the activities of the early Minoan and Phoenician seafarers (cf. Ovenden 1961, 1966).

In fact, archaeological excavation of the former cities of this region provides extensive cuneiform evidence, recorded on thousands of clay tablets, of a more of less continuous tradition of Chaldean astronomy dating back nearly three thousand years before the dawn of the Christian era. The most important of these finds are concentrated in and around the ancient city of Babylon, which was a leading centre of commerce and culture for the region, and which became the capital of a flourishing empire about the start of the second millennium BC. It is here that astronomy is first recognized as becoming a science.

Cuneiform literature contains a wealth of detailed information on a variety of astronomical topics, including the observation of comets, meteors and meteorites (e.g. Thompson 1900, Virolleaud 1905, Kugler 1907). Remarkably little of this knowledge, however, seems to have gained the attention of anyone except a handful of Assyriologists, and it is notably through the work of Pannekoek (1961), Neugebauer (1967) and van der Waerden (1974) that something of the spirit of this knowledge has reached a wider audience in recent times.

Indeed, almost from the development of writing itself, it is clear that the peoples of the ancient Near East knew of and frequently described phenomena which may be interpreted in terms of comets, shooting stars, fireballs and meteor showers (e.g. Bjorkman 1973). Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that these events were of purely incidental interest: observations of such phenomena were plainly inspired by a concern for their repetition, and were frequently used as a basis for the prediction of future events. Even the study of astronomy itself seems to owe as much to concerns of this kind as it does to the gentler pressures of time-keeping and orientation. In addition to highlighting the importance attached by these peoples to cometary and meteoric phenomena, the early cuneiform literature demonstrates a clear understanding of their extraterrestrial provenance, including that of meteorites, and shows that the cultures of the ancient Near East must have been well aware of the essentially astronomical nature of the events in question.

Thus, although our modern word 'comet' ultimately derives from a Greek word K01.14T71c meaning 'long-haired one', Man's interest in the subject can be traced back far further than the time of the Greeks. Indeed, the available records indicate that comets and comet-related phenomena seem to have played an important part in the beliefs and social habits of most known civilizations from the very earliest times. Excellent accounts of this fragmentary early evidence relating to the cometary and meteoric record have been given, for example, by Newton (1897), Nininger (1952) and Krinov (1960). The latter even cites evidence that a necklace of iron-meteorite beads was placed in an Egyptian pyramid dating from around 3000 BC, while in every case still available for study it has been claimed that the early word for 'iron' translates directly or very closely to the phrase `metal from heaven' (Zimmer 1916, Rickard 1941, Paneth 1956; cf. Bjorkman loc. cit.).

This suggests that knowledge of the falls of iron meteorites, and presumably the associated prospect of long comet-like trains of fiery debris stretching across a large part of the sky, was already well established by the time the Chaldean astronomer-priests of Babylon first began to scan the skies from their watch-towers or ziggurats, making careful astronomical observations. Although we cannot thus directly infer the origin and purpose of Babylonian astronomy, this and other evidence (e.g. Neugebauer 1967) suggest that a particularly portentous or miraculous view of meteoric phenomena was not generally prevalent in early times. Rather it suggests a more matter-of-fact view of the cosmos, with the none too discouraging prospect that we should eventually be able to piece together an understanding of learned opinion about comets and its development for at least the past five thousand years!

2.1.2 CHALDEAN IDEAS

In the absence of explicit accounts of the views taken by these early civilizations concerning comets, we may perhaps approach the truth by noting a much later reference to their ideas by the Roman writer and politician Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD). He devoted a whole volume of his treatise on natural science Quaestiones Naturales to a description of comets and cometary phenomena (see Clarke & Geikie 1910), and reported the views of two authors in particular: Epigines, a Greek astronomer of Byzantium (c.330 BC or 200 BC; cf. Hellman 1944, van der Waerden 1974), and Apollonius Myndus (either c.330 BC or 220 BC; cf. Clarke Geikie 1910, van der Waerden 1974).

These astronomers both claimed to have studied amongst the Chaldeans, but gave what are usually considered to be conflicting accounts of their beliefs. The former asserted that the Chaldeans understood nothing about comets, believing them simply to be a kind of atmospheric fire caused by an unusually violent kind of whirlwind; while Apollonius Myndus reported that they classified comets with the wandering stars (i.e. planets), and had in some cases even determined their orbits.

Although we cannot be certain of the accuracy of these edited accounts, especially in relation to the views of the earliest Babylonian astronomers, such reports are nevertheless of great interest in that they evidently hint at a much deeper understanding of comets in the past than is usually believed. Thus, while it is of the nature of comets generally to disintegrate under the influence of solar heating into bodies of ever smaller size, several of them in fact also circulate about the sun in fairly permanent elliptical orbits with similar short periods to those of planets. In these cases, their chief disintegration products, tiny fragments of dust, gradually spread around the orbit to form dense currents of circulating dust particles, called meteor streams. These become the source of the visible meteor trails, or shooting stars, that are seen in the earth's upper atmosphere when the streams are encountered by our planet.

The Chaldean view about cometary orbits as expressed by Apollonius Myndus thus comes surprisingly close to the modern picture; while the second idea, linking comets with a fiery atmospheric phenomenon induced by some kind of circulation, suggests knowledge of a rather direct connexion between comets and meteors. Seneca's brief references to Babylonian views are therefore consistent with the existence of a fairly accurate understanding of the behaviour of comets in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, suggesting that the earliest known ideas about comets may have been remarkably close to the truth.

To infer confusion on the part of the Chaldeans from the reports of Epigenes and Apollonius may therefore simply be to impose upon these early peoples an ignorance of the true nature of comets which the ancients did not possess. In the remainder of this chapter we discard such an assumption, and place the Chaldean ideas in a more complete historical perspective. In particular, we examine the rise and fall of ancient Babylonian astronomy and discuss the main factors — especially the cometary connexion — motivating its original development.

 

[Laura]

2.2 Signs from heaven

2.2.1 ASTRONOMANIA

In spite of developing what therefore appears to have been an essentially correct understanding of the celestial nature of comets and meteors, there are other aspects of the Babylonian worldview which are certainly more unexpected. In particular, the Babylonians combined their astronomy with the idea that history repeats itself, and with a very strong belief that celestial events exercised control over terrestrial ones. Why the latter assumption should have arisen amongst the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia has always been something of a mystery to historians (e.g. Frankfort et al. 1946, Butterfield 1981), conditioned, as one now is, to the idea of the rotating celestial sphere serving merely as a passive backdrop against which to register celestial events.

Indeed, it is clear that astronomy in the ancient Near East assumed an urgency in public affairs quite unlike the remote and detached business it has now become. The importance attached by these early civilizations to astronomical observations is reflected, for example, in the fact that watchtowers or ziggurats were provided for the use of astronomer-priests in almost every city of the land, rather like the churches and municipal buildings of modern times. Indeed, the amount of time and energy apparently devoted to such activities seems to have been quite out of proportion to anything which might reasonably be jus¬tified or explained on the grounds of idle curiosity, suggesting that the primary motivation for making the observations was once perhaps as compelling and as powerful as the defence of the realm.

Moreover, it does not seem as if the ultimate cause of this excessive interest in astronomical events can ever have been a purely local (or even national) phenomenon. For example, studies of other civilizations at about this time also hint at a strong degree of astronomical involvement in everyday activities, suggesting that these cultures too were similarly obsessed by celestial affairs. Indeed, even the scattered communities of Western Europe developed strong cultural ties with the heavens, constructing stone circles and astronomically aligned megaliths at almost every conceivable opportunity (e.g. Thom 1967, 1971; cf. Heggie 1981).

Here, although the precise astronomical purpose of the standing stones is still unknown, the artistic contemporaries of their architects in Britain were evidently able to produce designs which are surprisingly accurate renditions of modern descriptions of fireballs or even comets (compare, for example, Figures 2.2, 2.4 and 4.1). It thus appears that observations of astronomical phenomena, and of cometary and meteoric phenomena in particular (Clube & Napier 1982c, p.262), also played an important role in the developing cultures of ancient Britain. If this interest extended to include observations of meteor streams, or even corresponding streams of fireballs (cf. Halliday 1987, Terentjeva 1989), it is tempting to speculate that certain extremely precise megalithic alignments (e.g. Bailey et al. 1975), which surprisingly have no obvious lunar, solar or even stellar connexion, might now be interpreted as indicating the radiants of previously recognized intense meteor showers, such as the Taurids (cf. Section 2.2.3, p.18; Section 17.1.4, p.397).

These arguments suggest (e.g. MacKie 1977) that astronomy in Western Europe at this time may have had an importance similar to that in the Near East, where it is clear from the cuneiform records that observations made from the watch-towers played a significant part in the life of the community. In Mesopotamia, for example, the astronomical observations (or their implications) were disseminated throughout the land by a complex network of beacons and messengers, and the results then examined and assessed by high officials in a centralized organization. This body seems to have been charged with a primary responsibility for the well-being of the state and of its leader (e.g. Oates 1979, Butterfield 1981).

It is still customary to suppose that astronomy would inevitably have originated in an agricultural community of the kind known to have been present in Mesopotamia through its calendrical and (to a lesser extent) navigational requirements, never to have become an urgent occupation of the state. Nevertheless, it appears that there must have been other forces at work. The dilemma facing modern scholars who confront this situation is well expressed by Neugebauer (1946, p.38), who admits: 'Mesopotamian "astrology" can be much better compared with weather prediction from phenomena observed in the skies than with astrology in the modern sense of the word.'

Indeed, the use of the meteorological analogy is particularly apt, since the Chaldeans not only expected periodic astronomical phenomena to affect the earth but the same weather to recur in cycles of twelve solar years, along with good crops, famines and pestilences (Sayce 1874). The ancient Mesopotamian attitude to astronomy is thus generally recognized as being very strange, the more so since it appears also to have involved a considerable element of fear and trepidation: the overriding im¬pression to emerge from the cuneiform literature as a whole (Ja-cobsen 1946) is of an astronomical phenomenon with a potential vastly more oppressive than the weather!

2.2.2 PROPHETIC LINK

Accordingly, since they believed that celestial and terrestrial events were physically connected and that history might repeat itself, the Chaldeans had a strong inclination to record astronomical phenomena and correlate changes in the sky with events on earth. The lists of such interrelations are known as `omens', and always take the form: 'If [astronomical observation] then [terrestrial effect].' For example, using a reference cited by Bjorkman (1973): 'If a shooting star flashes as bright as a light or as a torch from east to west and disappears on the horizon, the army of the enemy will be slain in its onslaught.' This may be reliably interpreted to mean that a bright meteor did once appear on the occasion of the enemy being slain in battle; and the nature of the Babylonian belief was that they presumed the same terrestrial result would occur upon other instances of the identical celestial occurrence.

Eventually, following a lengthy period of strife punctuated by great floods and the not infrequent collapse of cities, serious attempts were made to systematize the celestial observations made before about 2000 BC and organize their supposed association with terrestrial events. One substantial compendium from this so-called omen literature, known as Enuma Anu Enlil (i.e. `In the time of Anu and Enlil'), coming to us from the Kassite period (c.1700-1100 BC) but drawing upon earlier sources, comprised a list of about seven thousand omens based on past events. This collection of prophecies is now regarded as representing a very high degree of scholarly achievement (Oppenheim 1964).

Anu and Enlil were two of a triad of principal sky-gods in the Sumerian pantheon, which also included Ea, and were generally regarded as exercising the dominant influence on the fate of mankind. Indeed, it is possible that the fear of what either Anu or Enlil might do was the principal motivating force of Babylonian astronomy. However, although the general behaviour of Anu and Enlil seems to have been reasonably well understood, it appears that they might also exercise their power in an unpredictable way. In modern parlance, the astronomer-priests were performing their duties in the presence of a natural phenomenon whose regular, time-averaged characteristics were broadly known, but which in practice had an exceedingly capricious incidence.

Cuneiform experts tend to assume that Anu and Enlil must always have been invisible, in keeping with current views about the nature of ancient gods, but the fact that they were frequently portrayed alongside visible planets and constellations (e.g. Figure 2.3) is more consistent with a perception of them as physically real entities. It is also difficult to see how such a reaction to the astronomical environment could have arisen in the Mesopotamian world, unless the two principal sky-gods of the Sumerian pantheon had made their presence felt in some fairly direct and extreme way during the third millennium BC, and had then acted in a manner subsequently from time to time that had revived memories of this earlier extreme behaviour. The prima facie evidence is thus of two well-recognized celestial bodies which wreaked havoc on earth and continued to evolve in a manner suggesting that such events were likely to recur.

If this view is correct, however, it has also to be accepted that the power of Anu and Enlil did eventually wane and become more diffuse; a thousand years later, for example, the two sky-gods seem to be more closely connected with extended re¬gions of the zodiacal band, and there is of course no sign of them now! Thus, Anu appears later to have been linked with the plane of the ecliptic, while Enlil was associated with the higher latitudes to the north (see Figure 2.3, cf. van der Waerden 1974). Such a transformation is not as strange as it might at first appear, however, since it is possible that the dust and debris generated by two exceptionally conspicuous cometary gods in regular short-period orbits could have given rise to temporarily visible zodiacal bands. Even later, one would expect such dust to spread all around the sky, producing two pairs of rings symmetrically above and below the ecliptic, and it may be significant that such rings, previously unsuspected in modern times, have recently been discovered by the infrared astronomical satellite IRAS (cf. Section 3.1.3, p.46).

There is therefore nothing particularly implausible about the view that the Babylonians had an essentially correct understanding of comets and meteors in the past, although one might then have to accept that in the first instance some of these bodies were also identified as celestial deities.

 

[Laura]

2.2.3 WHY FEAR COMETS?

The acknowledged purpose of the omens was to provide a record down the centuries of the connexion between celestial events and particular occurrences on earth, especially those that had grievous consequences such as the death of a king or the laying waste of the land. However, as a basis for prediction the list was beset with difficulty, since not all omens were unfavourable. For example, a luminous bolide might simply be a message in fire which conveyed greetings to the king from Enlil!
Nevertheless, despite such occasional light relief, the omens show that the sudden appearance of a bright meteor or a lingering comet was usually viewed by the Babylonians with a good deal of fear and superstition. This attitude to comets was evidently coupled with the generally baleful character of the Mesopotamian universe, a vestige of which has extended down the ages almost to the present day. However, although there is now a case for linking Anu and Enlil with the appearance of two bright and conspicuous short-period comets in the ancient sky, the reason for so deep-seated a fear of comets has never been properly addressed by modern scholars.

Thus, despite this popular fear persisting right into the twentieth century, its cause until now has remained a tantalizing enigma. After all, the most recent appearance of Halley's comet gave no immediate cause for alarm, and presumably most comets, even if rather brighter, must have as little direct influence on terrestrial affairs. A way around this apparent difficulty is to recognize that events which have been witnessed only during the relatively short period of recorded scientific history, covering little more than two or three hundred years, are probably not a fair representation of Man's experiences, or Nature's activities, on a longer timescale.

Indeed, recent researches in modern cometary astronomy now independently suggest that the civilizations of antiquity may have experienced happenings in the sky which have not since been repeated on the same scale (Clube & Napier 1986a, 1989b; cf. Chapter 17). For example, many astronomers now recognize a possible connexion between Encke's comet and the body that gave rise to the huge Tunguska explosion in Siberia on the 30th of June 1908 (e.g. Kresak 1978a; cf. Sekanina 1983). This particular comet must have been a far larger and more luminous body in proto-historic times, suggesting that the first glimmerings of early civilization could well have coincided with a rather more active celestial environment than we are now used to. Moreover, Encke's comet is also associated with the broadest known meteor stream, namely the Taurids (Whipple 1940, Whipple & Hamid 1952). This independently suggests a recent very large progenitor; and although encounters like the Tunguska explosion are still commonly treated as random occurrences and correspondingly rare (the appropriately sized lunar craters indicate an average terrestrial rate of one per approximately 500-1000 years; Shoemaker 1983), the connexion with a recent large progenitor is indicative of a much higher overall frequency of impacts during the last few thousand years (Clube & Napier 1986a, 1989a,b; Clube 1987b).

This result obviously has important implications for present interpretations of ancient cosmologies and astronomical traditions, particularly since most investigations of the omen literature have been conducted by historians and scientists working in relative ignorance of modern astronomical developments and of the ways in which evolving comets might affect the earth.

These specialists have generally adopted a somewhat dismissive attitude to the physical associations between the sky and the earth implied by Babylonian fears and beliefs; but the connexion between Encke's comet and the Tunguska event is just one way in which astronomers now recognize that such fears can be realized (see Chapter 17).

It is possible, then, that a once extra-luminous comet in an earth-crossing orbit underwent violent fragmentation, producing at least two conspicuous bodies which, with their associated bolides and zodiacal dust, were originally connected in Babylonian minds with a variety of celestial divinities, particularly Anu and Enlil. This is clearly a very speculative interpretation, given the nature of the evidence; but the implication that the ancient sky was once the scene of much greater activity than now would also explain (for instance) the common knowledge and acceptance of the falls of iron meteorites in antiquity, especially in relation to the rarity of such events nowadays (cf. Zimmer loc. cit., Paneth loc. cit.). Moreover, this view might similarly furnish the basis for an understanding of the strange fear and superstition which is so often associated with the cometary phenomenon. In this way, it is possible that one should now regard the later emergence of Graeco-Christian cosmology in a new light: that is, as a deviation from a former quite realistic view of the universe, first held by the Sumero-Babylonians and subsequently amplified and broadly confirmed by the results of modern post-Newtonian investigators.

 

[Laura]

2.3 Astrological advance

These recent developments, linking Sumero-Babylonian astrology and modern scientific astronomy, call for a reassessment of the status of 'astrology'.

For example, whilst there is a general tendency nowadays to regard 'astronomy' as rational and its predecessor 'astrology' as irrational, thereby reinforcing a rather self-serving belief that ancient astronomy is not particularly relevant to modern science, the assumption that ancient astronomy is mostly irrational is certainly not supported by historians. Indeed, historians tend to argue that the only really defensible course is to regard the astronomy as understood and practised down the ages as an expression of the most rational thinking of the time. In drawing an evolutionary distinction between astrology and astronomy, therefore, it is not rationalism that is at stake, but the way in which the underlying principles associated with celestial studies developed.

In particular, the distinction often drawn between ancient and modern astronomy is the level of commitment down the ages to some kind of physical association between celestial and terrestrial events. As we have seen, the devotion to this principle was virtually absolute in Babylonian astronomy from its inception, whereas by the time medieval astronomy was giving way to scientific astronomy in the post-Newtonian era any such principle was more or less completely abandoned. The current belief that ancient astronomy is largely irrelevant is based on a surviving assumption that there is no serious connexion between celestial and terrestrial events.

During the Newtonian era, this assumption was essentially based on the stand taken by counter-reforming Christian theologians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the assumed operation of 'first causes' in terrestrial affairs (e.g. Thomas 1971). It was apparently necessary, therefore, in order to counter the zealotry of much Christian theology of this period, to exorcise the magical and the miraculous from natural philosophy; and for this purpose, any direct celestial interference in terrestrial affairs was firmly denied. Nevertheless, there is no modern justification of this assumption, and it follows that there is now a basis for regarding both ancient astronomy and astrology as essentially rational, and treating each on its merits.

In the remainder of this section, the gradual development of ancient Babylonian astronomical and astrological ideas is described, showing how the original link with observations slowly came to be broken. This development culminated in the appearance of a completely erroneous horoscopic' theory of celestial influences on the earth, and led to the establishment of an equally erroneous view of comets and their decay products, in which comets eventually came to be seen as mere atmospheric visions or celestial signs.

2.3.1 JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY

Broadly speaking, historians now recognize the existence of four phases in the evolution of astronomy: judicial astrology, zodiacal astrology, horoscopic astrology and scientific astronomy. The first of these phases, judicial astrology, implied a very strong connexion between purposeful celestial bodies and harmful events on earth. Subsequently, however, any adverse effects (or otherwise) came to be seen more as 'influences', attributable in turn first to fixed locations in the zodiacal band (zodiacal astrology), and then to the wandering planets (horoscopic astrology), before eventually giving way to the modern picture in which even the existence of such influences is finally denied.

According to the beliefs underlying judicial astrology, the idea that celestial events might significantly affect the welfare of the community was such a plain truth that, as we have seen, much of the energy of the state was devoted to observing the sky and developing a process of prognostication based upon this belief. There was also a sense in which an omnipotent deity was believed to impose and maintain strict order on both the celestial and the terrestrial scenes. This understanding of the underlying character of the universe is still reflected much later in the Greek word 'cosmos'. Indeed, to the extent that 'religion' in its Latin derivation means 'scrupulous observance' or a 'way of binding oneself with respect to the gods' (e.g. Nielsen et al. 1983, Vallee 1989), this understanding persists to the present day.

Celestial order was presumed to extend to human affairs as well, and there was a clear implication that the deity might exercise his might (usually with the aid of thunder-bolts!) to preserve good conduct here below. In practice, new kings and their subsequent dynasties were often in the habit of assuming their right to rule as a consequence of the apparent dictates of this deity, who frequently co-operated by promptly laying waste any opposition (cf. Frankfort 1948, Clube 1989b,c). This idea — the divine right to rule — has proved to be an extremely potent force throughout most of recorded history, and was not finally abandoned until well into the present millennium. Even Napoleon, for example, is believed to have seriously desired the arrival of a comet to justify his assumption of power! On this basis, therefore, there can be little doubt as to the intensity of feeling with which the precepts of judicial astrology were held by the Babylonians and their Sumerian predecessors.

2.3.2 ZODIACAL ASTROLOGY

However, although the Babylonians were initially fearful of their celestial environment, judicial astrology gradually underwent a slow transformation. By the early part of the first millennium before Christ it is clear that a new form of astrology was being practiced, now called 'zodiacal astrology' (van der Waerden 1974). According to this picture, the region of sky once considered to be the domain of Anu and Enlil — the zodiacal belt — was divided into sections, each of which was perceived as wielding some kind of influence on terrestrial affairs below.

Nevertheless, although the principal occupants of the zodiacal belt are nowadays the sun, moon and planets, there are no very strong reasons for believing that any of these bodies yet played a significant role in the supposed influence of the zodiac on the earth. Rather, these objects, which vary their stations along the ecliptic, seem to have been used more as calendrical or chronological markers, a great event in the sky being appropriated by the king (or his minions) and dated by the position of the sun and the moon and the disposition of the planets amongst the constellations. This view is supported, for example, by re-cent studies of the astronomical iconography of stelae and of kudurrus (Tuman 1986) which indicate that planets, in the first instance at least, were observed for purely calendrical purposes.

A possible explanation of these developments can now be advanced in terms of the evolution of short-period comets in earth-crossing orbits close to the plane of the ecliptic. Such bodies would have been recognized by their associated meteor streams, which, especially in their initial stages, might have exerted a strong influence on our planet. If the number of such comets was in a state of decline during the third and second millennia before Christ, many of them becoming asteroidal in appearance or dark, it is reasonable to infer that what eventually became a less frequently realized source of fear or physical damage would have become increasingly associated with 'hidden influences'. This viewpoint is also consistent with Aristotle's otherwise inexplicable remark (Meteorologica, 345a, 6-11), speaking of an earlier time, that much dust had been deposited in the tropical zone (the region of the zodiacal cloud: see Section 3.3, p.64) because of a decline in the number of comets!

Indeed, unless we reject Aristotle's comment as meaningless, we seem here to have a direct report of a possible association between comets and the zodiacal belt. Inasmuch as a belief in the latter's hidden influences was also developing during the first millennium BC, we should also note the expressed role played by comets and meteors in human affairs: these bodies were believed to carry the respective souls of both mighty and ordinary folk from earth to heaven and vice versa (Eisler 1946, p.65).

Moreover, it is remarkable that the ancient gods whose names are now attached to the planets: Mars, Jupiter and so on, often have strong cometary associations in astrology. In a Greek omen text of about 150 BC falsely attributed to the Egyptian priest PelOsiris, for example, different types of comet are associated with Venus the horseman; with Mercury the swordsman and the torch-holder; with Jupiter the long-haired; with Saturn the disc-thrower; and with Mars the typhoon (Whipple 1985). This belief in fact persisted for centuries, and even survived to be recorded during the renaissance of Islamic science.

According to Kitab al-Mughni, for example, a ninth-century astrologer from Baghdad, the planetary names still followed the Greek classification but the illustrations and descriptions were remarkably cometary (Whipple loc. cit., Figure 1). The same planetary names, as recorded on Babylonian astrolabes, are also frequently associated with fixed zodiacal longitudes, whereas true planets (as van der Waerden has pointed out) are bound to vary their position along the zodiac. This discovery suggests that some planetary names, perhaps originally associated with observed comets, later became identified with certain times of the year when the earth intersected their corresponding fixed meteor streams in the zodiacal band.

If this admittedly speculative picture is correct, the attachment of divine names to the real planets must have been a relatively late occurrence, possibly prompted by the disappearance from the sky of the bright cometary bodies to which the names were originally applied (Clube Si Napier 1982c). In fact, there are indications that the planetary names underwent considerable evolution during the classical period (see Table 2.1), though most scholars still regard these changes as being of relatively little significance, consistent with the prevailing view that early astronomy developed exclusively out of agricultural, navigational and calendrical needs. Nevertheless, there are now reasonable grounds for believing that Babylonian astronomy (as manifested by judicial and zodiacal astrology) was founded on a possibly fearful attempt to understand and predict the flux of fireballs and meteors.

2.3.3 HOROSCOPIC ASTROLOGY

It is important to realize that this interpretation of the evolution of Babylonian astronomy is not at odds with its development also for purposes of timekeeping nor with the fact that Chaldean astronomers created a highly sophisticated lunar calendar (e.g. van der Waerden 1974). Indeed, the Babylonians developed a rudimentary perturbation theory for the purposes of calculating lunar ephemerides, and it was largely the arithmetical and algebraic techniques associated with this theory that the Greeks later took over when formulating their geometrical model of the cosmos, with its elaborate system of epicycles and deferents to explain planetary motions (Neugebauer 1948, 1967).

However, it also appears that the Greeks were so entranced by the assumed validity of their geometrical modelling that they eventually adopted a physical scheme in which the planetary motions, including those of the sun and moon, were considered to be supported by a complex set of interlocking crystalline spheres. The presumed existence of these spheres was clearly an obstacle to the passage of celestial missiles such as comets, which thus posed something of a difficulty for the model, since the latter implicitly ruled out any possibility of celestial bodies affecting the earth. The influence of such effects was still widely accepted at this time, and it is clear that the burgeoning Greek world-view required a complete reappraisal of the precepts of Babylonian astrology.

The appeal to geometry by the Greeks, then, is associated with the emergence during the fourth century before Christ of a totally new form of physical astronomy now known as horoscopic astrology'. This revolutionary development was based, in fact, on the completely false premise that planets exerted a distant influence on terrestrial affairs. However, unlike either judicial or zodiacal astrology, which as we have seen might have had a proper physical basis involving a direct contact between astronomical objects and the earth, horoscopic astrology, being specifically related to an imagined, remote influence of the planets (i.e. 'action at a distance'), is entirely spurious.

A direct consequence of this new theory was that other-wise unimportant planetary conjunctions or alignments were now perceived as having great significance. Here again we are dealing with a contrived, yet false transformation of ideas, for in the original judicial astrology there is some evidence that a catastrophe was widely associated with the aftermath of a conference or gathering of the gods (Butterfield 1981). Times of acute crisis might originally have been associated quite plausibly with conjunctions of cometary bodies or extended swarms of fireballs, but the later association attributing significance to the conjunction of planets is patently absurd.

Nevertheless, despite these somewhat contrived aspects of Greek astronomy, the theory of horoscopic astrology, with its geometrical modelling, was intensely attractive mathematically and ultimately became extremely influential. Much of this influence may presumably be attributed to the far-reaching near-Eastern hegemony established at this time by the Greeks, which eventually led to horoscopic astrology completely displacing zodiacal astrology during the centuries around the time of Christ.

This change was inevitably accompanied by the replacement of an originally oppressive view of the cosmos by a more optimistic outlook on the world, a form of 'enlightenment' that went with the growing belief in fundamentally benevolent gods which is now associated with the advance of Hellenism (James 1962).

At the same time, the implied magical influence of the planets on terrestrial affairs rapidly led to the growth of numerous `astral' religions throughout the Near East (van der Waerden 1974), each with its own claims to a special understanding of divine intentions and cosmic functions. The basic ideas, however, remained an exclusively Greek invention, and eventually came to maturity in Alexandria with the seminal works of Ptolemy during the second century AD. Thereafter, subsumed into Christian doctrine and promulgated by the Roman Church, the theory was to become a persistently recurrent theme in western science for nearly fifteen hundred years.

The advent of horoscopic astrology is now seen to have been an almost unmitigated disaster. It was a serious hindrance to the proper development of science during the Middle Ages, and its eventual overthrow, during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, was only possible after the further crucial change of paradigm that preceded the development of modern science. The two-thousand year period of horoscopic astrology's dominance, from about 300 BC to 1700 AD, bounded by major shifts of paradigm, is also commensurate with the period in which comets were viewed as atmospheric visions or celestial signs. It seems therefore that these false ideas about comets, which ultimately emanated from ancient Greece, may have had their origin in the decline of a perfectly rational Babylonian science, and owed their persistence to the contemporaneous growth of Christian doctrine, itself the probable child of an astral religion (e.g. James 1962, van der Waerden 1974).

 

[Laura]

2.4 Interweaving paradigms

This understanding of how astronomy evolved, through phases of judicial, zodiacal and horoscopic astrology, suggests that an original, fundamentally correct understanding of comets was subsequently lost at some stage prior to the start of the Christian era (cf. Section 2.1.2, p.10). Clues to the reason for this reversal may be found in the quite different approaches displayed by the Chaldean and Greek astronomers to their science. Whereas the former showed a distinct preference for the use of algebraic methods of calculation, the latter were much more inclined to work with geometrical techniques. Moreover, it has long been recognized that the guiding principles of mainstream Greek science, especially after the third century BC, differed quite markedly from those of Chaldean science, despite the latter's essentially rational character (e.g. Farrington 1944, Lloyd 1979, Neugebauer 1945). Thus, whilst it is clear that the Babylonians shaped and influenced Greek astronomy to a considerable degree, the differences in approach suggest that large-scale revisionism in science occurred during the immediate post-Socratic period, indicating a significant shift in paradigm of the kind explored by Kuhn (1962).

2.4.1 ATHENIAN BLUEPRINT

Indeed, looking at the classical period more broadly, one cannot help but notice that it is generally characterized by the presence of two main views about the natural world, one ancient and the other relatively new. On the first, there was a tendency to regard the environment as a purposefully-driven, overpowering system containing a variety of larger-than-life forces which might impress themselves rather adversely upon mankind. This view of the cosmos is largely outside our present range of experience, but if the existence of such forces was not in doubt, it is hardly likely that Man would have questioned the sanctions that could ultimately be brought to bear on human behaviour: thus, questions of morality would not have been regarded as matters for persistent debate. However, there was plainly also a desire at this time to associate the common view of nature with more benign influences, and it was Plato's comprehensive analysis of history, science and human behaviour which became the springboard for increasingly moral outlooks on Nature's plan. In this way, larger-than-life forces could be contemplated with either the optimism of an Epicurean or the pessimism of a Stoic.

On the other hand, Plato's analysis also implied more an outlook based on calculated resolve: there emerged, therefore, a growing tendency to view the facts with a certain degree of clinical detachment, even to deprive the world of some of its substance in the attempt to achieve a new synthesis. Cosmic forces, even if not altogether passive, can under these circumstances appear to be less than real, and there is then a tendency for the calculated resolve of a Platonist to give way to the detached equanimity of an Aristotelian. On the former view, comets may still retain the characteristics of being destructive, potentially devastating bodies; whilst on the latter, they become intrinsically harmless, amounting to little more than atmospheric visions or celestial signs.

However, the new thinking did not emerge along any single clear path. While the first indications of a paradigm shift arose in Athens during the fifth century BC, to be tested almost immediately in the wider Greek arena, it took at least another century before the new spirit of Hellenism advanced like a wave over Alexander's vast near-Asian empire, first gaining footholds in Assyro-Babylon and Egypt, then only to be engulfed by a second, mentally less dextrous wave from Rome.

The emergence of the new Greek thinking, essentially in the period between 300 BC and 150 AD, coincided with a period of great turmoil and social upheaval in the Near East. During this period, the older order of warring city states, conditioned to the former theological view of the world in which larger-than-life forces held ultimate sway, finally gave way to a new mightier form of empire in which more secularly minded men assumed for themselves the reins of power. Thus, whilst theology at this time was acquiring for itself a secular core, the conditions in which most levels of society were obliged to exist remained so oppressive as to be hardly conducive to an immediate general acceptance of developing learned opinion about the heavens.

Nevertheless, the founders of the Hellenic empire were able to establish the famous Alexandrian school in Egypt, which eventually became a secure, remote haven in which Greek natural philosophy was able to develop, taking on in its maturity much the form it was to assume during the eighth century and later once the Islamic empire was established. Elsewhere, we find only a relatively small community of Roman philosophers and writers, such as Seneca, who belatedly tried to bridge the gap between Athens in its heyday and what eventually turned out to be the start of the Christian era in Rome. Almost inevitably, it seems, these intellectuals of a steadily maturing Roman empire found themselves drawn into much the same divisions of opinion which had previously been experienced by their Greek mentors.

2.4.2 ROMAN COPY

Locally it was more the older Etruscan tradition that was gradually replaced in Rome (e.g. Cristofani 1979), just as the ancient Babylonian views, transmitted by the pre-Socratic sages from Ionia, had been overtaken in post-Socratic Athens. Thus, in formulating his palpably scientific cosmology, Seneca (see Cristofani loc. cit., p.95) remarks:

'There is this difference between us Romans and Etruscans. We believe that lightning is caused by clouds colliding, whereas they believe that clouds collide in order to create lightning. Since they attribute everything to the gods, they are led to believe not that events have a meaning because they have happened, but that they happen in order to express a meaning.'

However, in our haste to approve the teleological doubts expressed by this commentary, we must be careful not to overlook the facts. The lightning referred to by Seneca was called manubia by the Etruscans and was believed to be sent by the gods from their heavenly dwellings in the zodiac. Such lightning appears to have been a meteoric phenomenon and its significance lay in its capacity to warn of impending terrestrial events. Depending on the circumstances, it could be sent as a warning (fulmen praesagum) or as a sign of judgment, generally intended to punish but sometimes also bringing favourable consequences (fulmen ostentorium), or possibly being the source of effects which were always harmful (fulmen peremptorium), i.e. `it devastates whatever it strikes and changes the state of public and private affairs.'

These categories are identical to those found in the ancient Babylonian literature; indeed, the possibility in the past of Etruscan links with the Near East cannot be overlooked (Cristofani, loc. cit.). The implication seems to be that the Romans, like the Athenians, also experienced an 'enlightenment', seeing the universe as it was eventually presumed to be, i.e. orderly rather than apocalyptic. But if the early tradition was rational, as now seems to be the case, the fact of manubia and its immediate currency in Etruscan circles are in no way gainsaid by Seneca's expression of teleological doubt.

It is interesting to speculate, therefore, whether or not there was a connexion between the revival of 'enlightenment' in Rome and the gradual perfection of the Aristotelian cosmos in Alexandria, culminating with the work of Ptolemy. By the second century AD, apocalyptic and messianic claims were undergoing a significant retreat, and the period of widespread upheaval in the Near East (300 BC-100 AD) had come to an end. The question may be raised, therefore, whether the world was emerging from a renewed bout of meteoric activity at this time.

It will be noted later (Section 4.1.2 p.72) that periods of social upheaval followed by enlightenment, which are correlated with increased and reduced meteoric activity, appear to be more the rule than otherwise. Further, it has never been at all clear why Seneca's successors were unable to capitalize upon his eminently sensible view of cometary and meteoric phenomena (Section 3.2.4, p.63); but if potential interest in the subject died out simply because meteoric activity entered a period of relative decline, the turn of events does become a little more comprehensible. Moreover, since the straightforward apocalyptic view of the world inherited by many early Christians came to be abandoned during this period (100-300 AD) in favour of what seemed at first to be a more mysterious (Pauline) view of events, involving a temporary divine presence on earth, it is perhaps understandable why the subsequent debate over cometary and meteoric phenomena should then also have become scientifically sterile (Cronin 1981). In this way, it appears that because academic opinion now placed its weight behind a world-view which was orderly rather than apocalyptic, considerable encouragement was given once again to the belief that comets were merely atmospheric phenomena or celestial signs.

The final picture that emerges, therefore, is one in which during a very early period, prior to the second millennium BC, Man's knowledge of the prevailing celestial environment gave him a relatively accurate understanding of comets and their potentialities. In due course, as the supposed activity in the sky declined (Clube & Napier 1986a, 1989b), the opportunities to associate this essentially correct view with direct observational experience gradually became less frequent, until finally, during the period of Roman stability (100-300 AD) at the close of the classical period, such opportunities became so rare as to cause the understanding itself to be called into question. As a consequence, Greek science, Christian cosmology and Roman theology became firmly rooted in the idea that the cosmos was both divine (a very old notion) and largely unchanging (a very new notion!). The parallel concepts of heavenly permanence and perfection clearly had some basis in reality (and were to prove very fruitful), but as a foundation for true science, as is now well known, they were basically flawed and carried the seeds of their own destruction.

 

[Laura]

2.5 Meteoric record

Although much detailed historical research remains to be done before we can be certain whether this pattern in the advance of astronomy is correct, it provides a useful backdrop against which to view the early development of ideas about comets. In particular, it focuses attention on the varying fireball and meteor flux, and it is interesting to ask whether resurgent meteoric activity during and after the fourth century AD could produce any long-term changes in cosmological speculation which resemble the shifts in opinion that occurred during the fourth century BC (Athens-Alexandria) and the first century AD (Etruria-Rome). In fact, it is known from Chinese and scattered European sources (Biot 1848, dall'Olmo 1978) that the incidence of meteor showers has risen and fallen fairly often during the past two millennia, with significant renewed activity centred on the fifth, eleventh, fourteenth, sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first of these periods probably lasting several hundred years. In Europe at least, each of these high points in the meteor flux seems to have been marked by renewed millennial fears and intellectual doubts, if not social upheaval as well, from which there duly emerged a new level of understanding more or less rejecting the apocalyptic world-view (Clube & Napier 1989b).

2.5.1 ASTRONOMICAL TABLETS

If meteoric activity goes hand in hand with the temporary emergence of apocalyptic views, as we now suppose, the late cuneiform records from Babylon and Uruk should be examined from this perspective.

It has been through studies of the more readily understood lunar and planetary ephemerides recorded on the tablets of the late Seleucid period (300-0 BC) that the significant mathematical differences between contemporary Babylonian and Greek astronomy came to be recognized (Neugebauer 1945). Most of the available tablets do not correspond to ephemerides, however, but appear to be actual observations or the calculations associated with their reduction; these are the so-called 'diaries' of events, many of which still await translation and interpretation (Sachs 1974). It is an interesting question, therefore, whether these diaries also indicate any of the changes in meteoric flux that are thought to have taken place.

To gain some insight into the role of these observations, we may perhaps use as a guide the output of the only other centrally organized school of astronomers which maintained astrological traditions, namely the Chinese. By the time we are now considering, professional astronomy was already a vital component of the Chinese bureaucratic state, and among official observations, those of comets, meteors and fireballs were undoubtedly of substantial importance. Not only was a sophisticated classification scheme for comets in existence by the middle of the second century BC (Figure 2.4; cf. Figure 4.1, p.69), but for the next eighteen centuries China was to maintain a professional interest, albeit of varying intensity, in recording the incidence of fireballs, meteor showers and comets. These data now provide us with invaluable knowledge not only of past comets and the variable occurrence of meteoric phenomena but also, it seems, of the variable attention astronomers pay towards such happenings! In particular, they provide us with a useful guide to understanding the activities of Babylonian astronomers.

The Babylonian astronomical data for the years between 771 BC and 84 AD are strongly concentrated into the last three hundred years of the period before the birth of Christ, and show a distinct maximum around 150 BC (see Figure 2.5). Although this pattern may simply reflect a fortuitous distribution of clay tablets uncovered by archaeologists, it has been suggested also that it may reflect a real increase in astronomical activity (Oates 1979, p.179), such as may arise in response to enhanced activity in the sky — meteoric processes being the obvious candidate.

2.5.2 SHEEP OR STARS?

In fact, although the diaries of the late Seleucid period are mostly devoted to day-to-day records of astronomical and meteorological phenomena, several groups of statements appear at the end of each month which can be understood as summarizing average conditions during the month, such as the height of the river and various economic data, including the prices of barley, dates, cassia, sesame and wool (Sachs 1974). Such items seem to be quite irrelevant in an astronomical context, but they nevertheless figure prominently in the very first cuneiform lists drawn up by Sumerian astronomer-priests (Butterfield 1981), and often have specific meteoric associations in the subsequent Kassite literature (c.1500 BC; cf. Bjorkman 1973).

Why these particular meteoric associations should exist is admittedly very obscure, but presumably depends in some way on the prevailing astrological beliefs and the varied appearances of shooting stars and fireballs. Moreover, while the derivation of wool from sheep is virtually assured, it can hardly be ignored that in ancient Sumerian the respective words for 'wild sheep' and 'sheep pen' are identical to those for 'moving star' and 'circular enclosure in the sky'. A celestial shepherd and his flock shedding strands of wool whilst scuttling around the sky is reasonable imagery to associate with a large disintegrating comet and the fireballs it deposits on the earth. Indeed, the same association even extends to the word 'astronomy' (Herschel 1858, p.11), which comes from the Greek words Acrr4p (`star') and vOpoc (`law') or vgpav (meaning 'to tend', as a shepherd tends his flock). The significance of these ancient connexions during the late Babylonian period is not known, but the suggestion that various aspects of the data recorded in the 'diaries' relate to meteoric activity cannot obviously be excluded.

2.5.3 BABYLONIAN END

The data appear to indicate, therefore, a heightened degree of meteoric activity in the sky during the period in question. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that Chinese astronomers recorded some remarkable meteor storms at this time (Tianshan 1977), while the presence of a classification scheme for comets from the Han dynasty of this period (see Figure 2.4) indicates that some degree of professional interest in the behaviour of related bodies was certainly being shown elsewhere in the world.

Nearer at hand, one also finds an increased awareness of meteoric phenomena amongst contemporary Romans; and, as Cornford (1971) has emphasized, even the poet Lucretius (Latham 1951) was inordinately concerned with frightening, unpredictable events in the sky. Moreover, the last three centuries of the pre-Christian era are notable for the generally raised expectations amongst the populace at large of impending world-end and doom (Butterfield 1981).

In this way, the evidence suggests that a greatly increased flux of fireballs may have been observed by the still fearful Babylonian astronomers during the last three hundred years BC. However, as we have seen, by surviving such a 'bombardment' the more passive view of the cosmos originally articulated by the Greeks was gradually reinforced, leaving the much earlier Babylonian picture of the world to go into terminal decline. Indeed, it is not without interest that the survival of a nation seems also to be linked at this time with its perception of the cosmos. Thus, whereas the late rise and fall of the Seleucid empire and the Babylonian world-view correlates with an apparent resurgence and decline of meteoric activity, the corresponding fall and subsequent rise of the Greek world-view may be associated with the fortunes of the Roman empire during the two or three centuries either side of the time of Christ. In this way, it seems that essentially correct ideas and beliefs about comets and meteors which had been in the ascendant for at least the previous three thousand years were gradually dissolved.

Inasmuch as astronomy and cometary science are part and parcel of history itself, it is likely that a variety of influential new ideas about the fundamental nature of the world played an important role at this time in underwriting some of the new, but erroneous ideas about comets. In particular, by overturning an established view of the heavens, with which a good deal of modern research is perfectly compatible, the ideas associated with the formative period of the Christian era had the profound effect of deflecting academic enquiry along a completely false trail for almost two thousand years. It is amusing to note that this enormous detour seems to have established itself far more strongly amongst intellectuals with a mathematical bent than in the population at large, suggesting either an extreme propensity for wishful thinking amongst the learned, or too symbiotic an association with masters who are similarly deluded as to the extent of their power. Indeed, the same style of thinking may even have pervaded cometary science right up to the present day, and conceivably still impedes the proper development of modern cosmological investigations!

 

[Gaby]

Indeed, these possible blind spots in modern cometary science have interesting parallels in modern galactic astronomy, where progress is now continually hampered by a lack of knowledge concerning the nature and origin of the unseen 'dark matter'. This too, excusing the pun, is a weighty issue, and it is an interesting speculation whether a solution to all these pressing problems in modern astrophysics will turn out to have major aspects in common. If so, there would be no doubt as to the fundamental importance of cometary studies for cosmology and astrophysics.

Cuneiform experts tend to assume that Anu and Enlil must always have been invisible, in keeping with current views about the nature of ancient gods, but the fact that they were frequently portrayed alongside visible planets and constellations (e.g. Figure 2.3) is more consistent with a perception of them as physically real entities. It is also difficult to see how such a reaction to the astronomical environment could have arisen in the Mesopotamian world, unless the two principal sky-gods of the Sumerian pantheon had made their presence felt in some fairly direct and extreme way during the third millennium BC, and had then acted in a manner subsequently from time to time that had revived memories of this earlier extreme behaviour. The prima facie evidence is thus of two well-recognized celestial bodies which wreaked havoc on earth and continued to evolve in a manner suggesting that such events were likely to recur.

If this view is correct, however, it has also to be accepted that the power of Anu and Enlil did eventually wane and become more diffuse; a thousand years later, for example, the two sky-gods seem to be more closely connected with extended re¬gions of the zodiacal band, and there is of course no sign of them now! Thus, Anu appears later to have been linked with the plane of the ecliptic, while Enlil was associated with the higher latitudes to the north (see Figure 2.3, cf. van der Waerden 1974). Such a transformation is not as strange as it might at first appear, however, since it is possible that the dust and debris generated by two exceptionally conspicuous cometary gods in regular short-period orbits could have given rise to temporarily visible zodiacal bands. Even later, one would expect such dust to spread all around the sky, producing two pairs of rings symmetrically above and below the ecliptic, and it may be significant that such rings, previously unsuspected in modern times, have recently been discovered by the infrared astronomical satellite IRAS (cf. Section 3.1.3, p.46).

This reminds me of the "unseen comets" story covered in 2004. The second article is an update from 2009:

Unseen comets may raise impact risk for Earth

_http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041018/full/news041018-3.html

Thousands of dark objects could be hiding in our Solar System.

Mark Peplow

The Solar System could be teeming with almost invisible comets, according to some astronomers' calculations. If they are right, such extra comets would significantly increase the risk of a catastrophic impact with Earth.

These objects have never been observed, but the astronomers argue that 'dark comets' provide a likely explanation for an astronomical puzzle: we can only see a tiny fraction of the comets that theory predicts.

Astronomers think that many comets come from the Oort cloud, a field of billions of icy objects that lies up to 100,000 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth does and marks the outer boundary of our Solar System. The icy objects are sometimes driven towards the Sun by gravitational tides generated by the shifting masses of stars in our Galaxy. When this happens they become comets, orbiting the Sun every 20 to 200 years on paths that lie at an angle to the planets' orbits.

Given the size of the Oort cloud, astronomers have calculated that there should be about 3,000 comets in these orbits, 400 times more than are actually observed.

The common explanation for this discrepancy is that the comets quickly disintegrate into smaller lumps after just one or two orbits, says Bill Napier, a recently retired astronomer who worked at the Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland. But his mathematical model now suggests that, if this were true, the debris should cause many more major meteorite showers on Earth than we see, perhaps up to 30 every year.

In a paper to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society1, Napier concludes that the predicted comets are out there after all; we just cannot see them.

Little fluffy clouds

Napier worked with Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astronomer at Cardiff University in Wales, to explain the comets' invisibility. Wickramasinghe has suggested that Sedna, the most distant body identified in our Solar System, could have an orbiting twin that is dark, fluffy and made of tarry carbon compounds (see ""Sedna 'has invisible moon'":/news/2004/040823/full/040823-3.html").

As Sedna may be a member of the Oort cloud, Napier thinks that other members of the cloud could be equally dark. Once ejected, the tarry comets would simply suck up visible light, he says, remaining cloaked in darkness. "Photons go in, but they don't come out."

"It's an intriguing possibility," says Alan Fitzsimmons, an astrophysicist at Queen's University of Belfast in Northern Ireland. "But while we have seen dark objects before, Bill is proposing something much, much darker than anything we've ever detected."

NASA's Stardust probe, which is bringing back samples of dust from the comet Wild 2, lends some support to Napier's idea. In June this year it reported finding lots of tarry carbon compounds spraying from the comet2.

Infrared challenge

The dark comets would present a major challenge to astronomers searching the skies for objects that might collide with the Earth. "They're so black you can't see the damn things," says Napier. "These things will just come out of the dark and hit you with no warning. It looks as if we're dealing with a substantial impact hazard that people haven't clicked into yet."

However, although they reflect almost no visible light, the dark comets should give out a tiny glow of heat, visible as infrared radiation. The infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, which has been operating from Earth orbit for just over a year, has not seen any dark comets. But this could be because it focuses on very small, distant parts of the sky, says Napier.

Fitzsimmons disagrees, saying that if these objects existed in the numbers proposed by Napier, either Spitzer or near-Earth object surveys such as Spacewatch, based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, would have picked them up by now.

A new space telescope might provide the answer. Earlier this month, NASA announced that it would launch an orbiting infrared telescope called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2008, which will map much wider areas of the sky. Given enough time, it should be able to detect the dark comets, says Napier.

Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland

References

Napier W. M., Wickramasinghe J. T. & Wickramasinghe N. C. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc, published online, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.08309 (2004).
Kissel J., Krueger F. R., Silen J. & Clark B. C. Science, 304. 1774 - 1776 (2004)

Earth under threat from dark comets

_http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2578

History of violence

But dark comets with unpredictable orbits may pose a greater threat than asteroids, which are easier to spot, according to astrophysicists Bill Napier, from the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in Wales, and David Asher, from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.

"We may be dealing with a population of dark objects, carrying a lot of kinetic energy, which are not being properly picked up in the Spaceguard surveys," the researchers write in the February issue of the journal Astronomy & Geophysics.

Some comets scoot into the range of Earth from near Jupiter or further out, but appear regularly, like Halley's Comet. Others originate in the distant Oort cloud, a spherical comet nursery predicted to exist around one light-year from the Sun. These have orbits in the range of a million years, and are harder to predict or to spot, especially if they are too far away from the Sun to develop a characteristic comet tail as their icy surface melts.

When the Solar System passes through the galactic plane – the flattened disc of the Milky Way galaxy – molecular clouds may send Oort cloud objects hurtling into the inner Solar System, said the researchers.

Galactic mix-up

They say the timing of the Solar System's passage through the galactic plane – around 20 to 30 million years – closely matches spikes in the distribution of large impact craters on Earth for the past 250 million years. They conclude that comets have been responsible for most of Earth's impact craters and may pose an unrecognised risk to our civilisation.

Current NEO programs might be "monitoring a swarm of bees while standing on a railway line with an express train due," says the study.

Rob McNaught an astronomer from Australia's Siding Spring observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, who has had several comets named after him, agreed that dark, inactive comets would be under-represented in the Near Earth Object surveys.

But Paul Francis, from the Australian National University in Canberra, said the researcher's theory was "speculative", in particular because impact craters were hard to date accurately.

"The best guess from the rate at which these comets come in is that they are not a risk," said Francis. He said a comet impact of a similar scale to the one that wiped out over 2,000 square kilometres of forest at Tunguska in Siberia was a "one-in-10-million-year event", while a continent destroying impact was a one-in-60-million-year event.

"That's not to say it may not happen for 20 million years and may happen tomorrow, but it's not very likely."

 

[Laura]

Clube, Bailey and Napier's remarks at the beginning of this book also remind me of the following:

C's session 7 Nov 1994

Q: (L) You have often stated that the Bible is corrupted, I
would like to know who, exactly, corrupted the Bible and
when and how they did this?
A: Illuminati brotherhood for a thousand earth years.
Q: (L) Does this mean that up until a thousand years ago the
Bible was fairly accurate?
A: No.
Q: (L) Is there any possibility that the Catholic church had
anything to do with this corrupting influence?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Does the Catholic church have in its possession actual
original texts of the Bible that have not been corrupted?
A: No.
Q: (L) Were there ever such texts in existence?
A: No.
Q: (L) Who wrote the book of Matthew?
A: Greek enforcers.
Q: (L) What are Greek enforcers?
A: Like your FBI.
Q: (L) Who wrote the book of Mark?
A: Same.
Q: (L) Luke and John?
A: Same?
Q: (L) Acts?
A: Same.
Q: (L) Are any books of the New Testament written by who they
claim to be written by?
A: No. Remember this is 70% propaganda.
Q: (L) Is 30% then the truth or the actual teachings?
A: Close. Enough you must decipher from instinct through
meditation.

26 July 1997

Q: Why was astrology absent from the myths of ancient Greece?
A: Not absent, "Stalinized."
Q: What does that mean?
A: Soviets removed Stalin from the history books when he fell
from popularity. So, Greeks, Astrology... "Stalinized"...
Q: Why?
A: Deadly secrets would be revealed.
Q: Revealed to whom?
A: You.
Q: If we could find the pieces and put them together, they
would show us the drama and the connection between 3rd and
4th density?
A: You would have to use the original astrology, before
cosmic changes of a planetary nature; there was no Venus,
for one example, and earth was oriented differently
axially speaking.
Q: And the destruction of Kantek. This was the last
whitewash, the writings of Homer and so forth were put
place... is there any source where we can get closer to
these myths that will help us to figure out who is REALLY
on first?
A: Check the Isle of Man.
Q: (T) Are there more points to be plotted other than the
ones you gave us last week?
A: Plot those first.
Q: Okay, we did. Is there something significant about the
plotting? Are we supposed to see something here?
A: Yes.
Q: So, there is something there that we aren't seeing.
A: No rushes to judgment.
Q: Are there any additional points?
A: Wait and see.
Q: You once said that the Bible was written by Greek
enforcers, and now you have just said that the myths were
Stalinized. It also struck me that there were no ghosts
or spirits in the Greek texts. These texts portray the
Greeks as worshippers of the physical world. They were
astonished at Pythagoras' belief in reincarnation...
A: You have been reading altered texts.

Cs session 4 April 1998

Q: Okay, I get the connection. In the studies of the Triple
Goddess, I came across some interesting things. You
suggested that I should research the Third Man Theme. I
have discovered that the origin of the word 'man' meant a
female - the goddess. The oldest word for the male of the
species was 'wer' as in 'werewolf.' So, the Third Man
Theme could mean actually, the Triple Goddess. Am I
correct?
A: Close, if viewed through "sheets of rain."
Q: Okay. Tracking the Triple Goddess back to the oldest
references, we get to KaliMa. There are all kinds of
derivations of this name, but the thing that strikes me is
the relationship to the goddess Kell, or Kella, as well as
to the word kell, Celts, and how this might be transformed
into the word 'Cassiopaea.' Can you comment on this?
A: Do not the Celts like "kelly" green?!?
Q: Yes. So. What does 'green' have to do with it?
A: Keep searching... learning is accomplished thusly, and
learning is fun!
Q: Yes. I know. Okay, if that is related to Celts, then it
must also relate to the Goddess 'Car' which would make the
'philosophers of Dancar' the philosophers of the Goddess
Car, the equine term for 'mother' being 'dam' which could
easily be coverted to 'Dan,' not to mention the relation
to the Goddess Danae...
A: Need now to turn you research to Malta.
Q: Oh God! Alright. The three aspects of the goddess: in
the story of Perseus, there was Cassiopaea, Andromeda, and
Medusa... the three aspects, the mother, the virgin, and
the crone. But, in this story, Perseus manages to cut the
head off the crone. In other stories, the crone always
manages to win. Is there any particular reason why
Perseus cuts off the head of Medusa? Was this transposed?
Was the Medusa merely another aspect?
A: Serpentine.
Q: What about serpentine? Representative of the serpent race
or the Lizzies?
A: Eden.
Q: Was the story of Perseus the story of Eden? Was Medusa
the representative of the serpent of Eden?
A: Not quite.
Q: What are you alluding to that I am not getting? I feel
that I am out of sync with this conversation.
A: Out of sync only occurs when presupposition reigns
supreme.
Q: Well, it is not reigning supreme. The problem is: in the
oldest religions, it is the Goddess, the Mother, the
endless sea of potential of unassumed experience that was
the Goddess. There was unconditional love in the
beginning. But then, the patriarchal view twisted it and
it became violent and ugly and restrictive. And, from the
patriarchal view came the 'redeeming son' when before, it
was the redemption of the Goddess' blood. So, what I want
to know is: what happened to create the patriarchal
system? How was the Goddess suppressed?
A: All has been distorted and suppressed, so why not this?
Q: You once mentioned 'Greek Enforcers' who wrote the New
Testament. Where did these Greek Enforcers come from?
A: Order of Thelon.
Q: Never heard of it. On another occasion you called the
Nephilim 'enforcers.' Is there any relation between this
order of Thelon and the Nephilim?
A: Maybe...
Q: Where is the headquarters of this group?
A: Sicinthos.
Q: Is that a place? Never heard of it.
A: Yes.

 

[seek10]

A: Close, if viewed through "sheets of rain."
Q: Okay. Tracking the Triple Goddess back to the oldest
references, we get to KaliMa. There are all kinds of
derivations of this name, but the thing that strikes me is
the relationship to the goddess Kell, or Kella, as well as
to the word kell, Celts, and how this might be transformed
into the word 'Cassiopaea.' Can you comment on this?
A: Do not the Celts like "kelly" green?!?

I read some where Celts ate lot of pork. does this Kelly Green means pork or paleo diet ? .
Viewing through the "sheets of rain" means looks through trauma of floods from the interaction with other celestial bodies ?.

 

[Laura]

I think "Kelly green" in the above context refers to the fact that Casse is a word in old French that means "oak tree."

 

[Roger]

Laura, your reading ability is amazing, cant keep up to you...will make a comment as soon as I read this post...Thank you for your dedication...

 

[Laura]

Laura, your reading ability is amazing, cant keep up to you...will make a comment as soon as I read this post...Thank you for your dedication...

If I'm not reading, searching for clues, I feel like I'm wasting my time.

This book is particularly interesting because he goes into the evolution of ideas about comets, and compares it with the evidence, in some detail.

As you can see, the many astrologers who claim that astrology was being practiced by the Babylonians and Chaldeans have it all wrong. It wasn't about the "influence of the stars" in the sense they think it is, but rather a very practical and reality based concern with fireballs and comets because the sky WAS different. And that is pretty much what the Cs had said about it. They also mentioned the "Greek enforcers" idea and, until I started this book, that had made no sense at all. Now it does. Also, when you put this information together with what Russell Gmirkin wrote in "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus", about the composing of the Septuagint in Alexandria under Hellenic influence, you get the idea that a whole lot of "Stalinization" activity was going on. Things that were known about and understood as cometary events were recast as ancient acts of Jehovah. The migrations of peoples in response to this cataclysmic destruction was recast as "The Exodus of the Jews." And, of course, the activities in the skies were recast as "horoscopic astrology".

 

[Gaby]

Why these particular meteoric associations should exist is admittedly very obscure, but presumably depends in some way on the prevailing astrological beliefs and the varied appearances of shooting stars and fireballs. Moreover, while the derivation of wool from sheep is virtually assured, it can hardly be ignored that in ancient Sumerian the respective words for 'wild sheep' and 'sheep pen' are identical to those for 'moving star' and 'circular enclosure in the sky'. A celestial shepherd and his flock shedding strands of wool whilst scuttling around the sky is reasonable imagery to associate with a large disintegrating comet and the fireballs it deposits on the earth.

Hmm, the Lord is our Shepherd.

 

[Nienna]

Why these particular meteoric associations should exist is admittedly very obscure, but presumably depends in some way on the prevailing astrological beliefs and the varied appearances of shooting stars and fireballs. Moreover, while the derivation of wool from sheep is virtually assured, it can hardly be ignored that in ancient Sumerian the respective words for 'wild sheep' and 'sheep pen' are identical to those for 'moving star' and 'circular enclosure in the sky'. A celestial shepherd and his flock shedding strands of wool whilst scuttling around the sky is reasonable imagery to associate with a large disintegrating comet and the fireballs it deposits on the earth.

Hmm, the Lord is our Shepherd.

This whole thing is truly fascinating.

I have to say that seeing now how Jehovah/Yahweh was seen as a god of destruction and death has come about. Comets certainly do bring death and destruction to all, men, women, children and animals. So it makes sense how Jehovah/Yahweh is a jealous and violent god who will punish those who disobey him. Only, the Jews have taken it well out of context, as have all of those others who have their own other gods. As I said, this whole thing is fascinating.

It somehow amuses me to think that all of the followers of Jehovah/Yahweh are worshiping a comet! Talk about your pagan religions.