Paul's rests on its lofty masonry. The sun travelled
across its under-surface by day, and went back to the east during
the night through a tunnel in the lower portion of the vault. To
the common folk the priests explained that this framework of the
world was the body of an ancient and disreputable goddess. The
god of light had slit her in two, "as you do a dried fish," they
said, and made the plain of the earth with one half and the blue
arch of the heavens with the other.
So Chaldaea lived out its 5000 years without discovering the
universe. Egypt adopted the idea from more scientific Babylon.
Amongst the fragments of its civilisation we find representations
of the firmament as a goddess, arching over the earth on her
hands and feet, condemned to that eternal posture by some
victorious god. The idea spread amongst the smaller nations which
were lit by the civilisation of Babylon and Egypt. Some blended
it with coarse old legends; some, like the Persians and Hebrews,
refined it. The Persians made fire a purer and lighter spirit, so
that the stars would need no support. But everywhere the blue
vault hemmed in the world and the ideas of men.
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