in from the Orient during the first two Christian centuries, and even gained a foothold in some few Christian circles—speculations which we choose to term “Gnostic”—in these, there still reëcho traces of the (in part) primitive Babylonian mythology. Yes, even among us there are a few things that recall the Babylonian wisdom, although of course but weakly. The Babylonians became the teachers of our whole cultured world, especially in astronomy and in all branches dependent on it—in mathematics and