“The light of the moon and the changes of the moon were probably the first phenomena which led men to study the motions of the heavenly bodies. In our times, when most men live where artificial illumination is used at night, we can scarcely appreciate the full value of moonlight to men who cannot obtain artificial light. …The tiller of the soil might fare tolerably well without nocturnal light, though even he,—as indeed the familiar designation of the harvest-moon shows us,—finds special value, sometimes, in moonlight.

“But to the shepherd moonlight and its changes must have been of extreme importance as he watched his herds and flocks by night. We can understand how carefully he would note the change from the new moon to the time when throughout the whole night, or at least of the darkest hours, the full moon illuminated the hills and valleys over which his watch extended, and thence to the time when the sickle of the fast waning moon shone but for a short time before the rising of the sun.

“To him [the shepherd], naturally, the lunar month, and its subdivision, the week, would be the chief measure of time. He would observe—or rather he could not help observing—the passage of the moon around the zodiacal band, some twenty moon-breadths wide, which is the lunar roadway among the stars. These would be the first purely astronomical observations made by man; so that we learn without surprise that before the present division of the zodiac was adopted the old Chaldean astronomers (as well as the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, and Chinese astronomers, who still follow the practice) divided the zodiac into 28 lunar mansions, each mansion corresponding nearly to one day’s motion of the moon among the stars.

Sheep in the Bible

“It is easy to understand how the first rough observations of moonlight and its changes taught men the true nature of the moon, as an opaque globe circling round the earth, and borrowing her light from the sun. They perceived, first, that the moon was only full when she was opposite the sun, shining at her highest in the south at midnight when the sun was at his lowest beneath the northern horizon. Before the time of full moon, they saw that more or less of the moon’s disc was illuminated as he was nearer or farther from the position opposite the sun, the illuminated side being towards the west—that is, towards the sun; while after full moon the same law was perceived in the amount of light, the illuminated side being still towards the sun, that is, towards the east. They could not fail to observe the horned moon sometimes in the daytime, with her horns turned directly from the sun, and showing as plainly, by her aspect, whence her light was derived, as does any terrestrial ball lit up either by a lamp or by the sun.” Proctor, Richard A. Flowers of the Sky.

.