Babylonian Astronomy Research Articles

Bisecting the trapezoid: tracing the origins of a Babylonian computation of Jupiter’s motion

Between ca. 400 and 50 BCE, Babylonian astronomers used mathematical methods for predicting ecliptical positions, times and other phenomena of the moon and the planets. Until recently these methods were thought to be of a purely arithmetic nature. A new interpretation of four Babylonian astronomical procedure texts with geometric computations has challenged this view. On these tablets, Jupiter’s total distance travelled along the ecliptic during a certain interval of time is computed from the area of a trapezoidal figure representing the planet’s changing daily displacement along the ecliptic. Moreover, the time when Jupiter reaches half the total distance is computed by bisecting the trapezoid into two smaller ones of equal area. In the present paper these procedures are traced back to precursors from Old Babylonian mathematics (1900–1700 BCE). Some implications of the use of geometric methods by Babylonian astronomers are also explored.

On the Problem of Syriac “Influence” in the Transmission of Greek Science to the Arabs: The Cases of Astronomy, Philosophy, and Medicine

The answer to the question of why the role of Syriac in transmitting Greek science into Arabic is negligible in astronomy but important in philosophy and medicine lies in the history of Syriac science. There was little imperative to transmit Greek astronomy into Syriac because Babylonian astronomy was dominant and received in Syriac. Conversely, there was an imperative to transmit Greek philosophy, due to the lack of anything comparable in Syriac and a need that arose in the late fifth century. Medicine is an in-between case—there was a well-established Mesopotamian medical system, yet Greek sources were translated and integrated with it. This integration was rejected by Arab translators, the effects of which impacted modern scholarship. This analysis explains why influence varies by field and highlights how the modern study of the Syriac sciences has neglected their Mesopotamian background and focussed on how they received and transmitted Greek sources.

Stars in Babylonian Astronomy

Stars in Babylonian Astronomy

Ancient Babylonian astronomers may have been first to use geometry

Ancient Babylonian astronomers may have been first to use geometry

Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter’s position from the area under a time-velocity graph

The idea of computing a body's displacement as an area in time-velocity space is usually traced back to 14th-century Europe. I show that in four ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets, Jupiter's displacement along the ecliptic is computed as the area of a trapezoidal figure obtained by drawing its daily displacement against time. This interpretation is prompted by a newly discovered tablet on which the same computation is presented in an equivalent arithmetical formulation. The tablets date from 350 to 50 BCE. The trapezoid procedures offer the first evidence for the use of geometrical methods in Babylonian mathematical astronomy, which was thus far viewed as operating exclusively with arithmetical concepts.

Babylonian astronomers tracked Jupiter

History of Science Ancient Babylonian astronomers developed many important concepts that are still in use, including the division of the sky into 360 degrees. They could also predict the positions of the planets using arithmetic. Ossendrijver translated several Babylonian cuneiform tablets from 350

The conflict between Israelite prophecy and Babylonian astronomy in Isaiah 44:25 and 47

Isa 44:25 and 47 refer to astronomy and divination. On the basis of these references some theories place the anti-Babylonian polemic of Isa 47 in the atmosphere of Nabonidus’ conflict with his priests over the moon goddess Šin. This article rejects that Deutero-Isaiah’s authors had specific knowledge of either Babylonian cultic practices or the religious and political situation under the reign of Nabonidus. Instead, it is proposed that Deutero-Isaiah wrote its polemic against Babylonian ideas of communicating with the divine from a Judahite setting. This conflict between Israelite prophecy and Babylonian mantic practices can be reduced to four factors: only YHWH fulfills his plans; Babylonian instrumental divination versus Israelite intuitive prophecy; divinatory wisdom is foolish; YHWH saves.

Astronomy in the Ancient near East

ASTRONOMY IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestial Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative. Jeffrey L. Cooley (Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2013). Pp. x + 396. $54.50. ISBN 978-157506-262-4.It is perhaps difficult to imagine the impact the recovery of ancient Mesopotamian culture had on the Western world in the late nineteenth century. In 1872 when George Smith, then an assistant in the British Museum, discovered the Assyrian version of the biblical flood story, it is said he jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.1 Equally momentous was the discovery of Babylonian astronomy, first made public in 1881 by the Jesuits Joseph Epping and J. N. Strassmaier.2 Each of these discoveries fuelled cultural diffusionist ideas about Babylonian origins, not only of stories in the Bible, but of world mythology, astronomy and astrology. Such ideas had a temporary but widespread influence through the school of Pan-Babylonism, a short-lived sport (in the botanical sense) of mostly German nineteenth-century Orientalism.Jeffrey Cooley's Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East begins and ends with discussion and critique of the Pan-Babylonists, who read Near Eastern mythology as astronomical allegory and anachronistically attributed to those stories great astronomical knowledge, supposedly dating to c. 3000 b.c., but in fact only emerging either in the latter half of the first millennium b.c (the zodiac) or not at all (precession). Some participants in the school (Hugo Winckler) were also involved in the so-called Bibel-Babel controversy which inflamed scholarly opinion and found a formidable opponent in F. X. Kugler, s.j., one of the founding fathers of Babylonian mathematical astronomy. Kugler published an article entitled the ruins of Panbabylonism,3 a clever pun on Claudius James Rich's important memoir On the ruins of Babylon (1818), and followed it up with a monograph, Im Bannkreis Babels: Panbabylonistische Konstrucktionen und religionsgeschicltliche Tatsachen (1910), which demolished all credibility of the pan-Babylonists regarding the history of astronomy.One of the detrimental effects of Pan-Babylonism, besides the dissemination of highly fanciful and erroneous interpretations of natureand star-mythology and claims of the diffusion of such ideas from Babylonia to the rest of the world, was to drive a long-lasting wedge between scholars of Babylonian astral science and those of cuneiform literary texts. After Kugler's demolition of pan-Babylonist claims, the very idea that mythology and astral science might have some intertextual resonance became virtually anathema and no Assyriologist in his or her right mind would touch the subject for nearly one hundred years. This division has been slowly eroding in the last generation, and Cooley's study can be viewed as a culmination of this change in attitude. Poetic astronomy in the ancient Near East removes that wedge, provides a corrective to Pan-Babylonism (p. 87), and considers the cultural continuities between narrative and technical literatures, not only of the cuneiform world, but those of ancient Ugarit and Israel as well. The book's thesis is that contemporary knowledge concerning the heavens is indeed found in ancient Near Eastern literature, thus reflecting a cultural matrix in which science and literature are not separate.Taking up Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite traditions in turn, as is laid out methodologically in the first chapter, Cooley surveys each and discusses what is now known about celestial science in these distinct yet not unrelated cultures, and analyses their narrative texts in the light of their particular intellectual backgrounds. Chapter 2 usefully surveys the various classes of astronomical/astrological cuneiform sources, from divinatory to astronomical texts, making critical use of David Brown's PCP (prediction of celestial phenomena) paradigm and EAE (Enuma Anu Enlil) paradigm to bring historiographic structure to the long chronological span of the sources. …

On the Babylonian Sighting-Criterion for the Lunar Crescent and its Implications for Egyptian Lunar Data

The aim of the present paper is to establish a lower boundary condition of a possible successful sighting of the lunar crescent based on Babylonian predictions and observations. This means that all Egyptian chronological options showing deviations in positive direction with visibilities below this boundary condition will be dismissed as impossible. Although a theoretical limit of 10° for the visibility criterion, i.e. a minimum lagtime between sunset and moonset of 40 minutes, is mentioned in text TU 11, the Babylonian Astronomical Normal Star Almanacs contain several predictions for first or last visibility with values smaller than 10° and the Astronomical Diaries a few such observations. Thus, a value of 10° for the lagtime is an inappropriate lower boundary condition which cannot be used as knock-out criterion for Egyptian chronological options based on lunar data.

2 Enoch and the Trajectories of Jewish Cosmology: From Mesopotamian Astronomy to Greco-Egyptian Philosophy in Roman Egypt

AbstractInasmuch as new Coptic evidence for 2 Enoch lends confirmation to the priority of the shorter recension and adds plausibility to the theory of its Egyptian provenance, this discovery invites us to shift from the compilation of parallel motifs towards more integrative approaches to contextualizing this enigmatic apocalypse. This essay is an experiment in situating 2 Enoch within the intellectual culture of early Roman Egypt. It explores the possibility that the short recension reflects the translation of the Mesopotamian astronomy and Jewish cosmology of earlier Aramaic Enoch writings into Greek language and idiom in interaction with philosophical and “scientific” concerns with the cosmos current in early Roman Egypt.

A COMPARISON OF ASTRONOMICAL TERMINOLOGY, METHODS AND CONCEPTS IN CHINA AND MESOPOTAMIA, WITH SOME COMMENTS ON CLAIMS FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF MESOPOTAMIAN ASTRONOMY TO CHINA

Mesopotamia and China have long traditions of astronomy and celestial divination, and share some similarities in their approach to these subjects. Some scholars have therefore argued for the transmission of certain aspects of Mesopotamian astronomy to China. In this paper, I compare four aspects of ancient astronomy in these cultures in order to assess whether there is any evidence for transmission. I conclude that the similarities between Chinese and Mesopotamian astronomy are only superficial and there is no evidence for the transmission of Mesopotamian astronomy to China.

Hazor: A Cuneiform City in the West

Previous articleNext article No AccessARTICLESHazor: A Cuneiform City in the WestWayne HorowitzWayne Horowitz Search for more articles by this author Wayne Horowitz is Professor of Assyriology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of the Cuneiform in Canaan Project. As epigrapher for the Hazor Excavations, Professor Horowitz has had the honor of publishing first editions of the cuneiform texts from Hazor since the 1990s. Professor Horowitz's other academic interests include ancient Mesopotamian astronomy and cosmic geography.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Near Eastern Archaeology Volume 76, Number 2June 2013 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5615/neareastarch.76.2.0098 Views: 33Total views on this site Copyright 2013 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Essay Review: Babylonian Astronomy and Celestial Divination: In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and its Legacy

study of Babylonian astronomy and celestial divination has a history that now extends over 140 years. It began with the publication by Henry Rawlinson and George Smith of Cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, iii (1870), Plates LI-LXIV, of which LXIII, Table of the movements of the planet VENUS and their influences, is none other than the Venus of Ammisaduqa. A number of these texts, including the Venus Tablet, were soon translated by Archibald Henry Sayee in astronomy and astrology of the Babylonians (1874), and a method of dating the Venus Tablet by dates of visibility phenomena in lunar months was described by Sayee and R. H. M. Bosanquet in The Venus Tablet (1880). next year J. Strassmaier and J. Epping published Zur Entzifferung der astronomischen Tafeln der Chaldaer ( 1881 ), containing descriptions of the various classes of texts and a decipherment of two columns of a lunar ephemeris (ACT 122, K-L), followed by Astronomisches aus Babylon (1889) and further papers (1890-95), with analyses of texts of mathematical and observational astronomy. These were followed by the first comprehensive studies by F. X. Kugler in Die Babylonische Mondrechnung (1900) and Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel (1907-35). During this period, there was also publication of texts of celestial divination, including C. Virolleaud's edition of the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil (1905-12) and the first of the many publications of E. Weidner. O. Neugebauer's Astronomical cuneiform texts (ACT, 1955) extended and greatly enlarged Kugler's work on mathematical astronomy through the publication of all known ephemerides, as the tabular mathematical texts are known, and procedure texts, rules for computation, with restoration of missing sections and systematic analysis of the methods of computation. And the same year A. Sach's Late Babylonian astronomical and related texts (LBAT, 1955) published copies of virtually all texts then known of mathematical and observational astronomy. These latter two publications have formed the foundation of research in these subjects ever since, most notably Neugebauer's analysis of the mathematical astronomy in A history of ancient mathematical astronomy (HAMA, 1975).

Book Review: New Light on Mul. Apin: Writing Science before the Greeks: A Naturalistic Analysis of the Babylonian Astronomical Treatise MUL.APIN

NEW LIGHT ON MUL.APIN Writing Science Before the Greeks: A Naturalistic Analysis of the Babylonian Astronomical Treatise MUL.APIN. Rita Watson and Wayne Horowitz (Brill, Leiden, 2011). Pp. xxviii + 224. euro97. ISBN 978-90-04-20230-6.This new study of the Akkadian astronomical 'compendium' MUL.APIN, or 'Plough Star' , is the result of a collaboration between Rita Watson, a developmental psychologist, and Wayne Horowitz, an Assyriologist. MUL.APIN, attested mainly through tablets and fragments from Assyria from the seventh century b.c. and later ones from Babylonia, was likely composed between the twelfth and the seventh century b.c. The authors subject this well-studied composition to a new form of analysis rooted in the cognitive sciences, an approach that has rarely, if at all, been applied to cuneiform texts. The starting point of their study is the existing authoritative edition of MUL. APIN by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree (1989), whose translation is reproduced at the end of the book. Since only insignificant new fragments have been discovered since 1989, a new philological edition is not provided. In chap. 1 the authors explain why they selected MUL.APIN, a rare example of a well-preserved scholarly cuneiform text, extant in a single canonical version whose composition reflects some process of gradual incorporation of distinct layers of scientific knowledge. In §1.5 the authors introduce their central argument that is worked out in detail in chap. 4, namely that the structure of MUL.APIN shows a progression towards 'higher' levels of astronomical knowledge. As I will suggest below, this claim is open to debate. A minor point of critique concerns the term 'naturalistic' , whose meaning is explained as grounding cultural explanation in the biological substrates of human cognition (p. 20). It remains unclear why this somewhat confusing term is used instead of the more readily understandable 'cognitive' .Chap. 2 provides a useful introduction to cognitive aspects of writing. Writing allows permanent storage of information, thereby reducing the load on working memory and increasing the amount of information that can be utilized for a task. Moreover, it allows for rereading and reinterpretation, without which a complex scientific text such as MUL.APIN could not be composed and used. The authors argue that the more analysis a text requires ('inferential demands'), the more pronounced are the cognitive effects of writing. Accidentally, this would suggest that the vast corpus of Mesopotamian astrological omens and the scholarly commentaries associated with it may represent a better test case for their cognitive analysis, since these texts require even greater analytical and interpretative skills than MUL.APIN (cf. David Brown, Mesopotamian planetary astronomy-astrology, 2000).Chap. 3 discusses the frames of reference, categories and concepts underlying MUL. APIN. They function as diagnostics of cognitive change in the next chapter, which contains a section-by-section analysis of MUL.APIN. The results are summarized in chap. 5, which includes very interesting observations about the structure of MUL. APIN that seem to have escaped other investigators. As remarked earlier, the authors uncover a systematic development in MUL. ??G? towards increasing abstraction and complexity regarding the use of spatial and temporal reference frames, rhetorical devices, taxonomy of stars, formulation of procedures, definitions and axioms. …

Visual Aspects of the Transmission of Babylonian Astronomy and its Reception into Greek Astronomy

Summary Evidence for the transmission of Babylonian astronomy into the Greco-Roman world is well attested in the form of observations, numerical parameters and astronomical tables. This paper investigates the reception of Babylonian astronomy in the Greco-Roman world and in particular the transmission, transformation and exploitation of the layout of texts and other visual information. Two examples illustrate this process: the use of Babylonian lunar eclipse records by Greek astronomers and the adaptation of Babylonian methods of eclipse prediction in the Antikythera Mechanism.

Astronomy and culture in Late Babylonian Uruk

AbstractThis article presents three case studies of the role of astronomy within the culture of Late Babylonian Uruk. I argue that in order to fully understand Babylonian astronomy it is necessary to combine technical study of astronomical cuneiform texts with wider cultural study of Babylonian scholarship, archival practice and society.

The relation of Babylonian astronomy to its culture and society

Babylonian astronomy is quite different from astronomy as it is customary today. We have to reconstruct it exclusively from texts and a few schematic drawings accompanying them. No instruments related to astronomy have been found. These texts are written on clay tablets in cuneiform script which was used in the Near East from ca. 3000 BCE to 100. It was completely forgotten and only deciphered in the middle of the 19th century. Since then, hundreds of thousands of clay tablets have been found in archaeological excavations, mostly in present-day Iraq. Among these are a few thousand tablets related to astronomy. Many have been published, but more still need to be worked on. And of course an unknown number of such texts is still buried under the sands of Iraq.

Celestial Measurement in Babylonian Astronomy

Summary Late Babylonian astronomical texts contain frequent measurements of the positions of the Moon and planets. These measurements include distances of the Moon or a planet from a reference star and measurements of the position of celestial bodies within a sign of the zodiac. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between these two measurement systems and propose a new understanding of the concepts of celestial longitude and latitude in Babylonian astronomy. I argue that the Babylonians did not define latitude using the ecliptic but instead considered the Moon and each planet to move up or down within its own band as it travelled around the zodiac.

The Standard Scheme of the Moon and Its Mean Quantities

The Papyrus Rylands 27, of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, is a portion of a Greek treatise or tract of the third century A.D., providing rules for the longitude and node of the Moon. Apart from the illuminating analysis provided by Hunt, it has been the subject of a number of profound studies by Neugebauer, van der Waerden and Jones.1 These have culminated in the presentation by Jones of what he calls the Standard Scheme of lunar motion, illustrated by its application in various parts of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and elsewhere.2 It is clear from all this that we have here a scheme for the computation of the true longitude and node of the Moon based on a Babylonian type of 'zigzag' model. Jones has provided all that one needs for the practical derivation of the lunar coordinates, including lengthy tables to facilitate the computation of the summation of values from the zigzag functions that determine the coordinates. That much completes the subject as a self-contained model within the context of 'arithmetical' schemes, but leaves untouched the question of the relation between the Standard Scheme and the trigonometrical models, that is, those based on the use of one or more epicycles, etc. The purpose of this article is to develop this relation, one that situates the model in the interface between Babylonian and Greek astronomy.

Eclipse Prediction and the Length of the Saros in Babylonian Astronomy

The Saros cycle of 223 synodic months played an important role in Late Babylonian astronomy. It was used to predict the dates of future eclipse possibilities together with the times of those eclipses and underpinned the development of mathematical lunar theories. The excess length of the Saros over a whole number of days varies due to solar and lunar anomaly between about 6 and 9 h. We here investigate two functions which model the length of the Saros found in Babylonian sources: a simple zigzag function with an 18-year period presented on the tablet BM 45861 and a function which varies with the month of the year constructed from rules found on the important procedure text TU 11. These functions are shown to model nature very well and to be closely related. We further conclude that these functions are the likely source of the Saros lengths used to calculate the times of predicted eclipses and were probably known by at latest the mid-sixth-century BC. 1. Eclipse Prediction and the Saros Throughout most, perhaps all, of the Late Babylonian period, the basic method of predict- ing eclipses of the sun and moon in Babylonia was based upon the so-called Saros cycle (SC) of 223 synodic months. This method was not restricted to simply identifying dates 1 or more Saroi after a visible eclipse but could be used to identify the dates of all eclipse possibilities (EPs). It almost certainly originated with lunar eclipses and was then applied to solar eclipses. Indeed, it is most likely that all Babylonian eclipse theories—for want of a better term—were developed from lunar eclipse observations and used for predicting lunar eclipses and then applied by analogy to solar eclipses. The method for predicting lunar eclipses itself arises by combining the Saros with the realization that EPs generally occur every 6 months but occasionally after only 5 months. Therefore, if within a Saros of 223 months, there are a eclipses at a 6-month interval and b eclipses at a 5-month in- terval, simple mathematics shows from 6a + 5b = 223 that a = 33 and b = 5. Within a Saros of 223 months, there are therefore 38 EPs, of which 33 are at a 6-month interval and the remaining 5 are at a 5-month interval. Distributing the 5-month intervals as evenly as possible, we obtain five groups of eclipses in which the first eclipse of each group