Very curiously, then, and accurately does the Accadian calendar give us the date of its origin, and of the first naming of its months, as that when the _winter solstice coincided with the sun’s entry into the first degree of the constellation Aries_[80]--the date in round numbers of 6,000 B.C. [80] The winter solstice now coincides very closely with the sun’s entry into Sagittarius. It _precedes_ the sun’s entry into Aries by almost a third of the whole circle of the ecliptic. To this same date it is, as I believe, that the miraculous protections accorded by the Aswins to the _distressed_ solstitial sun and moon and earth appear to point, and fully does this view corroborate the opinion that the Aswin-legends took their rise in pre-Vedic times. They also, as do the Indra and Vritra myths, refer us for their origin to a more northern latitude than tropical India. In the tropics the sun is scarcely less powerful in winter than in summer. The astronomers who drew up the Accadian calendar, and the myth-makers of the Aswin-legends, must, according to the astronomic theory, have dwelt in temperate zones and formulated calendar and myths about 6,000 B.C. VI NOTES.--AHURA MAZDA, ETC. [Ahura Mazda, a note reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, February 1900] Professor Hommel in the March number for 1899 of these _Proceedings_ calls attention in his _Assyriological Notes_ to the name “Assara Mazas” appearing in a list of Assyrian gods. The section of the list in which this name appears contains “a number of foreign sounding names” belonging to gods honoured, presumably, in out-lying portions of the Assyrian dominions. Professor Hommel claims “that this god (Assara Mazas) is no other than the Iranian Ahura Mazda,” and he thus concludes his arguments in favour of this opinion--“concerning _Assara-mazas_, I should like to remark in closing this paragraph, that we have here the same older pronunciation of Iranian words as in the Kassitic _Surias_, ‘sun’ (later _Ahura_ and _Hvarya_, but comp. Sanscrit _Asura_ and _suria_), which is of the highest importance for the history of the Aryan languages. In the same Kassitic period, between 1,700 and 1,200 B.C., I suppose was borrowed by the Assyrians the Iranian god Assara-mazas.” In a Paper entitled _The Median Calendar and the Constellation Taurus_, printed in the June number for 1897 of these _Proceedings_, I made a very similar claim for the derivation of the name of the great god of the Assyrians--Assur.