Full context:   We astrologers have inherited this conception of space with eight elements, which probably had its origin in the proto-history of astrology. There has been preserved a proclamation of the Assyrian sovereign Sargon II (721-705 B.C.): "Before and after, on all the sides exposed to the eight winds, I opened great portals."   Etruscan diviners, contemporaries of Sargon, likewise used a division by eight.   We know that the divine cosmogonical triad of the Sumerians, AN (Anu) / EN.LIL (Enlil) / EN.KI (Ea) had already been replaced by the Semitic planetary triad Sîn (Moon) / Shamash (Sun) / Ishtar (Venus) before the 14th century B.C., the era in which their emblems appear. We recognize the lunar semi-disc, the eight-armed star of Venus and the solar disc with its four axes and four intercalated solar rays, on a kudurru dating from the time of the Kassite king Melishipak (1188-1174 B.C.).   King observes: "The presence of the emblems of the Sun, Moon and Venus in the form of an eight-armed star covering the top of a boundary stone leads one to think that something of astral nature underpins it."   The representation of Venus, indeed of any celestial body, in the form of an eight-armed seal, attests to a very ancient division of celestial space into eight sectors, as the only known Mesopotamian planisphere appears to show by its division of the celestial sphere into eight distinct zones.   The division of the local sphere into eight sectors existed also in the earliest Chinese astrology,   and the celebrated Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra (The Treatise on the Laws of Manu), a product of the Brahmanic tradition, mentions eight celestial regions.