Starting from a remark by A. H. Sayce that the Accadian calendar was arranged to fit the signs of the zodiac, Emmeline Plunket follows the clue through Babylonian astronomy and the star lore of later peoples. Her linked papers argue that the constellations and the first month of the year were fixed by observers of the sky thousands of years before the classical astronomers.
An inventive piece of Edwardian archaeo-astronomy, with plates, for readers curious about where the zodiac began. Download the free EPUB.