Dating back to early Sumerian and Babylonian times and later in Egyptian writings, celestial symbols have been found on monuments. We read that Abraham was told by God to observe the skies and see therein the future. The number twelve figured prominently in the old writings.
It seems the information was given to Jacob about the Constellations. When Jacob was near death, he called his twelve sons to bless them and foretell their future. As told in the “Prophecy of Jacob”, he associated his oldest son Reuben with the zodiacal constellation of Aries. Back then it was the constellation of the spring equinox instead of Taurus. Simeon and Levi were lumped together as the Twins, the constellation of Gemini. Judah was compared to a Lion, which is Leo, Zebulun was called Aquarius the water bearer. Then Rachel’s sons .. Joseph was the Bowman of Sagittarius and Benjamin substituted for his sister Dinah, the Virgo. Gad was a Scorpio and Naphtali was a Capricorn.
The floors in the remains of the Jewish Synagogues in the Holy Land are decorated with the zodiacal circle of twelve constellations depicted by their ancient symbols. The Hebrews were familiar with the zodiac and also the association with predictions of the future, called fate. They cried Mazol-tov and still do at weddings and Ba Mitzvahs and it is thought to mean good luck, but it literally means “a good/favorable zodiacal constellation”.
In Babylonian times, a corps of astronomer-priests observed the heavens and assumed a key role in royal decisions. The fate of the King, the land, and nations were divined from the position of the planets in a particular zodiacal constellation. Records have been found of hundreds of engraved tablets revealing heavenly phenomena interpreted to foretell invasions, famines, floods, civil unrest, or long life for the King, a stable dynasty, victory in war, prosperity. They were written down on clay tablets. In all instances, Fate was deemed to be indicated by the heavens.
Today’s astrology roots go back well beyond the Babylonians, the Chaldeans of Greek reports. Fate and the Zodiac began at least when the calendar began, in Nippur in 3760 B.C. which is when the Jewish calendar began. Also recorded in the Egyptian “Book of the Dead”, is the fact that one’s hope for an eternal afterlife depends on the weighing of the heart on the Day of Judgment. At the time of the Exodus, the first constellation, that of the spring equinox was Aries, not Taurus. Also, in the heavens Fate had twelve stations.
Dividing the heavens into twelve parts is a highly sophisticated astronomy, one so advanced that man by himself, could not have known it when this division of the celestial circle began. How could the Sumerians have known all that they did? They themselves provided the answer. “All that we know was taught to us by the Anunnaki” (Those who from heaven to earth came). It is known from these early writings that they came from another planet with a vast orbital period and a longevity in which one year encompassed 3,600 of Earth years. They therefore had no difficulty discerning Precession of the Equinoxes and devising the twelve part zodiac.
Ancient Science and Religion texts which were also passed on in other tongues, including the biblical Hebrew have considered the Sumerian tales of the Anunnaki of the ancient gods to be Mythology. Our knowledge of the Greek Mythology and that of all the nations stemmed from the original Sumerian beliefs and texts. The Sumerians told that there was a time before civilized man was on earth, when animals were wild and crops not yet cultivated, when there arrived on Earth a group of fifty Anunnaki who journeyed from their home planet Nibiru, meaning ‘the planet of crossing’ and reaching earth they splashed down in the waters of the Persian Gulf. They found fish and fowl to eat and then began to make bricks from the clay of the soil and established the first-ever settlement on earth by extraterrestrials.
The full, detailed story is told in a series of books called “The Earth Chronicles” by Zecharia Sitchin. His first book was “The Twelfth Planet”.
I will write more about this in another Blog.
I have found this information to be totally fascinating and much of it correlates with our Biblical Old Testament, but in so much more detail.