Earliest Cosmologies

“In the judgment of those who have seen it the following treatise sheds a new light on not a few important questions. It ought to prove helpful to all students of ancient thought, preeminently to all teachers of ancient literature. It deals with a theme fundamental beyond all others. Back of every religion, and of every philosophy or science worthy of the name, lies a “world-view”; a concept in which are included all localities and all beings supposed in that religion or philosophy or science to exist. In proportion to its clearness and completeness, it in every case groups and mentally pictures these localities and beings in certain relations to each other, and thus also in their total unity as a universe. The science which critically investigates and expounds the worldview of any people, or of any system of doctrine, is called Cosmology; the branch which does this for a group or class of world-concepts is known as Comparative Cosmology. The present work may be regarded as an introduction to this fascinating study.

The ten chapters of the work cover all the nations from whose literary remains we can hope for any important light on the world-concepts of generations yet earlier”. — Extract from Author’s Foreword