1.1 Sumerian and Babylonian Cosmology

The Sumerians developed sophisticated astronomy with advanced mathematics based on the sexagesimal system, that is still being used today in reporting time, including the modern ongoing practice of dividing the circle into 360 degrees, each degree into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. This system is profoundly related to the theoretical value of the speed of light, whose normalized value corresponds to the fractal dimensions of our space-time geometry, which may approach three for a perfect vacuum.

There are various overwhelming evidences that ancient philosophies and cosmologies were actually advanced and accurate much more than what we have ever thought, and we may eventually need to return back to these arcane interpretations of nature, that had been long dismissed because they did not appear to make any sense according to our theories of physics and cosmology. However, when interpreted correctly, these ancient conceptions can be reconciled with our modern views and may also be the only way to reconcile the deep discrepancies between our own different theories.

For example; the classical elements: earth, water, air, and fire, which the Sumerians, and many later civilizations, employed to explain the complexity of nature, can be interpreted as the four condensation levels of aether, that is the background space which is created dynamically in the inner levels of time as we introduced in Chapter I of the Duality of Time. These four elements, together with their quint-essence, are indeed the five levels of time that correspond to the various possible degrees of freedom, or the dimensions, starting from the metaphysical oneness 0D and up to the three dimensions 1D, 2D, and 3D of physical multiplicity that is dynamically evolving through the outer time T. So in total we have four levels of dynamic existence in time: 1D, 2D, 3D, and T, which become seven when considering the two opposite directions of each one of the three spatial dimensions: 1D, 2D, and 3D.

From these seven levels of time come the seven days of the week, while the seven heavens and seven earths are actually the two extreme states of each one of these seven levels of time, which correspond to vacuum and void, from which all the states of matter are composed. The ancients, therefore, have sound reasons to call them heavens and earths, because these two extreme states actually correspond to waves and particles, or energy and mass, or light and matter, respectively. So indeed everything in nature is made from these four ultimate elements, while the compounds that we find in Mendeleev periodic table of chemical elements, and also the elementary particles of the Standard Model, are only two humble steps towards this ancient unification that we believe to have been long superseded!

However, this does not mean that the ancients acquired any detailed understanding of the microscopic and macroscopic structures of the Universe anywhere near what we have in the present era, because they did not have the required experimental and analytical tools. Nevertheless, although intelligent humans can surely attain high levels in understanding most natural phenomena, if they maintain their ceaseless endeavors, and endure the required enormous efforts, but they can never comprehend the realities behind nature, as far as they remain confined in this phenomenological dimension of the local world. In order to start realizing the reality, one needs to ascend beyond the confining dimensions (of space-time, for example) in order to understand how they operate, as it was nicely demonstrated by Plato in his Cave Allegory. We showed in Chapter I of Volume II that this requires activating the arcane talents of the heart, rather than simply relying on the mind.

Babylonian astronomers recorded detailed star catalogs and began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the Universe, which formed the first scientific revolution that was adopted in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy. According to the historian A. Aaboe, fragments of Babylonian astronomy records have survived in the form of clay tablets with ephemerids and procedure texts show that their astronomy was “the first and highly successful attempt at giving a refined mathematical description of astronomical phenomena” . He also acknowledged that “all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West if not indeed all subsequent endeavor in the exact sciences depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways.” Aaboe (1974).

The Babylonians view the cosmos as revolving around circularly with the heavens and the earths being equal and joined as a whole, and they also believed in seven heavens and seven earths linked chronologically to the creation by seven generations of Gods.

Babylonian and Chaldean astronomers kept systematic diaries recording various ominous phenomena, which allowed them to discover the repeating lunar eclipses and predict the revolutions of planets. Along with that, they created sophisticated mathematical models that allowed them to predict these various interfering cycles. For example, they discovered that the Sun’s motion along the ecliptic was not uniform, and recorded many other accurate astronomical observations.