on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. Nominally a subject of Egypt, he raised an army of several thousand well-armed blacks and became a dangerous rival to the Egyptian authorities. At the height of his power Zobar was visited (1871) by Georg Schweinfurth who found him “surrounded with a court which was little less than princely in its details” (Heart of Africa, vol ii, chap. xv.) In 1869 an expedition sent from Khartum into the Bahr-el-Ghazal was attacked by Zobeir and completely defeated, its commander being slain. Zobeir represented that he was blameless in this matter, received a “pardon” and was himself appointed governor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, where he was practically independent. In 1873 he attacked the sultan of Darfur and the khedive Ismail gave him the rank of bey and sent troops to co-operate. After he had conquered Darfur (1874), Zobeir was made a pasha, but he claimed the more substantial reward of being made governor-general of the new province, and went to Cairo in the spring of 1876 to press his title. He was now in the power of the Egyptian authorities, who prevented his return, though he was allowed to go to Constantinople at the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. In 1878, however, his son Suleiman, having got possession of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and acting on instructions from his father, defied the authority of General Gordon, the new governor-general of the Sudan. Gordon sent Romolo Gessi against Suleiman, who was subdued after an arduous campaign and executed. During the campaign Zobeir offered, if he were allowed to return to the Sudan, to restore order and to pay a revenue of £25,000 a year to the khedive. Gordon declined this help, and subsequently, for his instigation of the revolt, Zobeir was condemned to death, but the trial was a farce, the sentence was remitted and he remained at Cairo, now in high favour with the khedival court. In March 1884, Gordon, who had been sent to Khartum to effect, if possible, the relief of the Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan, astonished Europe by requesting that Zobeir, whose son be had overthrown and whose trade he had ruined, should be sent to Khartum as his successor.[1] Zobeir, described by Sir Reginald Wingate, who knew him well, as “a quiet, far-seeing, thoughtful man of iron will—a born ruler of men” (Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan, book v.), might have been able to stem the mahdist movement. But to reinstate the notorious slave-dealer was regarded in London as too perilous an expedient, even in the extreme circumstances then existing, although Colonel Stewart (Gordon’s companion in Khartum), Sir Evelyn Baring and Nubar Pasha in Cairo, and Queen Victoria and Mr Gladstone, all favoured such a course. In March 1885 Zobeir was arrested in Cairo by order of the British government for treasonable correspondence with the mahdi and other enemies of Egypt, and was interned at Gibraltar. In August 1887 he was allowed to return to Cairo, and after the reconquest of the Sudan was permitted (1899) to settle in his native country. He established himself on his estates at Geili, some 30 m. N of Khartum.
See Gordon, Charles George, and the authorities there cited.
ZODIAC (ὁ ζωδιακὸς κύκλος, from ζώδιον, “a little animal”), in astronomy and astrology, an imaginary zone of the heavens within which lie the paths of the sun, moon and principal planets. It is bounded by two circles equidistant from the ecliptic, about eighteen degrees apart; and it is divided into twelve signs, and marked by twelve constellations. These twelve constellations, with the symbols of the signs which correspond to them, are as follows:—
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The signs—the Greek δωδεκατημόρια—are geometrical divisions thirty degrees in extent, counted from the spring equinox in the direction of the sun’s progress through them. The whole series accordingly shifts westward through the effect of precession by about one degree in seventy two years. At the moment of crossing the equator towards the north the sun is said to be at the first point of Aries; some thirty days later it enters Taurus, and so on through Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces. The constellations bearing the same names coincided approximately in position, when Hipparchus observed them at Rhodes, with the divisions they designate. The discrepancy now, however, amounts to the entire breadth of a sign, the sun’s path in Aries lying among the stars of Pisces, in Taurus among those of Aries, &c.
Assyria and Babylonia.—The twelvefold division of the zodiac was evidently suggested by the occurrence of twelve full moons in successive parts of it in the course of each year. This approximate relation was first systematically developed by the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and formed the starting-point for all other divisions of time. As the year separated, as it were of itself, into twelve months, so the day was divided into twelve “double hours,” and the great cosmical period of 43,200 years into twelve “sars.” Each sar, month and hour was represented at once visibly and symbolically by a twelfth part of the “furrow” drawn by the solar Bull across the heavens. The idea of tracing the sun’s path among the stars was, when it occurred to Chaldaean astronomers, an original and, relatively to their means, a recondite one. We owe to its realization by them the constitution and nomenclature of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Assyrian cylinders and inscriptions indicate for the familiar series of our text-books an antiquity of some four thousand years. Ages before Assur-bani-pal reigned at Nineveh the eighth month (Marchesvan) was known as “the month of the star of the Scorpion,” the tenth (Tebet) belonged to the “star of the Goat,” the twelfth (Adar) to the “star of the Fish of Ea.”[2] The motive underlying the choice of symbols is in a few cases obvious, but in most remains conjectural. The attributes of the deities appointed to preside over the months and signs were to some extent influential. Two of them, indeed, took direct possession of their respective portions of the sky. The zodiacal Virgo is held to represent the Assyrian Venus, Ishtar, the ruling divinity of the sixth month, and Sagittarius the archer-god Nergal, to whom the ninth month was dedicated. But no uniform system of selection was pursued; or rather perhaps the results of several systems, adopted at various epochs, and under the influence of varying currents of ideas, became amalgamated in the final series.
This, there is reason to believe, was the upshot of a prehistoric reform. So far as positive records go, Aries was always the first sign. But the arrangement is, on the face of it, a comparatively modern one. None of the brighter stars of the constellation could be said even roughly Aries. to mark the equinox much before 1800 B.C.; during a long stretch of previous time the leading position belonged to the stars of Taurus.[3] Numerous indications accordingly point to a corresponding primitive zodiac. Setting aside as doubtful evidence derived from interpretations of cuneiform inscriptions, we meet, in connexion with Mithraic and Mylittic legends, reminiscences of a zodiac and religious calendar in which the Bull led the way.[4] Virgil’s
- Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum
- Taurus
perpetuates the tradition. And the Pleiades continued, within historical memory, to be the first asterism of the lunar zodiac.
- ↑ Gordon and Zobeir met in Cairo on the 25th and 26th of January (see Egypt No. 12 of 1884) and Gordon from that time onward asked for Zobeir’s help. It was not however until the 10th of March that his wish was made public in a telegram from Khartum published in The Times.
- ↑ Lenormant, Origines de l’Histoire, i. 236.
- ↑ The possibility should not, however, be overlooked that the “stars of the months” were determined by their heliacal risings (see Bosanquet and Sayce on Babylonian astronomy, in Monthly Notices Roy. Astr. Soc. xl. 117). This would give a further extension backwards of over 1000 years, during which the equinox might have occurred in the month of the Ram.
- ↑ J. B. F. Lajard, Recherches sur le Culte de Mithra, p. 605.
