THE NUMBER SEVEN [To the Edithr of the Sem-TA - roll.]
Sta.—Your correspondent suggests that we " retrace the de- velopments of the interest in the number seven to its origin in the Astrology of Babylon." But we can retrace this interest much further back than the seven-storied towers of the later Babylon associated with the movements of the sun, moon and five then known planets. For the seven-day week is much
alder than astrology of the seven.planets r. while the observa- tion of and reckoning time by the position of the seven- starred polar constellation—the Wain, Plough or Great Bear, or the position of the seven-starred zodiacal group of the Pleiades goes back several thousand years behind the seven-storied planetary towers of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. That the seven-day week is (roughly) a moon's quarter, as our " fortnight " tells of the fourteen nights between new moon and full moon, agrees with the very early Hindu story of the twenty-seven or twenty-eight nakshatra (necklace of pearls) or days in the lunar month as measured by its observed passage through the zodiac, Soma, the moon, dividing his time equally between these. And the temples of the Moon God of Ur, recently unearthed, show us observatbries where both the moon's path through the zodiac and its phases were accurately measured and recorded as far back as four or five thousand years n.e.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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