Many threads of Greek and Roman astronomy appear to lead back to a priestly astronomy arising in Mesopotamia some time in the first millennium B.C.

The Babylonians were apparently the first to develop systematic observations of the planets, and they recorded the celestial motions with considerable skill. But in laying the foundations of later astronomy, they also preserved a crucial link with the past. Again and again they asserted a claim that could only appear preposterous to the modern translator. They declared that the distant planets were the *gods* of former times.

Sumerian myths, we noted earlier, say that the rites and standards of "kingship" descended from the central luminary An, founder of the Golden Age. In Babylonian myth the Sumerian An appears as Anu, first in the line of gods and kings. And according to the best authorities on Babylonian astronomy, the god Anu was mysteriously linked to *the planet Saturn*. The association was stated most bluntly by the renowned expert on Babylonian astronomy, Peter Jensen, in *Die Kosmologie der Babylonier*: Anu was Saturn.

What makes this identity stand out is the degree to which one nation after another repeated the same connection. It's an interesting fact, not often noticed, that the ancient Hebrews regarded their race as having been "Saturnian" in the beginning, when they lived under the rule of the creator El. That is, the Hebrews honored the same ancestral tie to Saturn as did the Romans.

Indeed, the consistency with which early astronomies identity Saturn as the former creator-king is extraordinary. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew Saturn as the heaven-sustaining Zurvăn, "the King and Lord of the Long Dominion." The Iranian god-king Yima, a transcript of the Hindu Yama, founder of the Golden Age, was also linked to Saturn. The Chinese mythical emperor Huang-ti, first in a great dynasty of kings and mythical founder of the Taoist religion, was identified astronomically as the planet Saturn. Even the Tahitians recall of the god Fetu-tea, the planet Saturn, that he "was the King."

Many ancient nations commemorated the era before the fall, the harmonious condition of the "first time," by designating one day of the week as a holy day, the Sabbath. But is it significant that originally the Hebrew Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, was the day of Saturn? So was the seventh and most sacred day of the Babylonian and Phoenician weeks. For the Romans this commemorative day was Saturni dies, "Saturn's day." The same day passed into the Anglo-Saxon calendar as the "day of Seater [Saturn]," which, became our own Saturday.

When scholars today look back at this esoteric connection of the Sabbath and Saturn, they see little more than an oddity of minor significance. That is because historians as a whole have missed the ancient link of Saturn to kingship, to the origins of civilization, and to the roots of ancient myth and symbol.

But there is an even more significant aspect of the Saturn mystery.

SNIP