Sacred Number

I was talking to John Neal¹ [the metrologist], and he mentioned in passing the Constant of Nineveh:

"The staggering figures on these tablets were originally ignored as the ramblings of weak-minded Sumerians obsessed with numbers.  Nevertheless, Chatelain saw that there could be a lot more to it — his attention was drawn to the number 195,955,200,000, and he explains in his book how this is the expression of 70 multiplied seven times by 60... this huge cycle came off of Sumerian clay tablets, which were found in the burned-down remains of the Library of King Assurbanipal in Nineveh."

from www.divinecosmos.com

You might guess this "constant" appears to be in seconds of time! Even today time [and angle] is as it was defined by the Sumerian notation of base-60, with sixty seconds in each of sixty minutes in each of twenty four hours of the day. The constant is said to miraculously encode a whole range of astronomical if not physical constants. With respect to Sacred Number and the Origins of Civilization chapter one [viz. Saturn and the seven day week], something immediately comes to light;

1. In seconds, the Nineveh Constant is exactly 60 times the Saturnian synod of 378 days², being 22680 days long.

• If we take the Brihaspati period (chapter 9), called Trigon in the West, in which three conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter takes place, it is found to be 60 times the Barhaspatya samvantara of 361 days (19²) or 21660 days which would give the constant 187,142,400,000 seconds. (It takes 361 days for Jupiter to traverse a single sign of the zodiac.)
  

The significance might be that the Saturn round of 60 was somehow a "Lord of Measure" just as the Trigon Period of Saturn-Jupiter conjuctions came to be seen as a "passing of the Measure" from Saturn to Jupiter.

The period 378 days is the time Saturn takes to traverse 1/28th of the Zodiac rather than the 1/12th of a sign. This period is one origin for the Indian Nakshatras of which there were 28 or 27, perhaps because these became associated with the orbital period of the Moon [27.32166 days avg] with later emphasis on the sign in which the Moon lay [the Moon moving in a day a similar angle as Saturn moves in "a year"]. This was clear in my first book, Matrix of Creation, where the zodiac of the ancient world appears to have been associated with 28 and the number seven which Saturn rules [especially through the week and the pole of the Earth the seven-fold "hill of heaven"].

^1. John Neal's web site is www.secretacademy.com and to increase its availablility John's very significant, large and quite heavy master work on metrology All Done With Mirrors can be bought here or by cheque and post to the address on his website.

2. The "Saturnian synod of 378 days" is actually the 378.09 days [on average] that the Sun takes to manifest the same aspect to Saturn, the slowest of the planets and called the "god of time", "el pondorosa" [the slow one] associated with the metal lead and plumbing the depths. Saturn also maintains the pure ratio of 15:16, a musical semitone, to the lunar year whilst Jupiter maintains a whole tone of 8:9 to the lunar year. These and other relationships form a numerical matrix of meaning behind such traditional associations.