41 ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA
am I not urging every Philistine to read Astral Sciences?
ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA*)
When Schumann reviewed Chopin’s Op.28 The Preludes on
their first publication in 1839, he remarked: “Philistines must
keep away!” The same could be said of Hunger and Pin-
gree’s Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia. Only after some years
of immersion in the intricacies of cuneiform language, and
of wading through the difficulties of the mathematical meth-
ods employed, can some understanding of the Mesopotamian
astral material be gained. And if these documents are to be
appreciated not only in their own terms, but in terms of their
rôle and importance when first written, prolonged exposure
to what is known of ancient Mesopotamian culture is all-
important. None of this is remarkable for so esoteric a disci-
pline as Assyriology. It is, however, still noteworthy so far
as Mesopotamian astronomy, in particular, is concerned, and
goes to the heart of the problem lying behind Astral Sciences.
Descriptions of cuneiform astronomy and astrology made by
scholars who know little of the discipline because they have
been unprepared even to go to the effort of reading the bet-
ter secondary sources, let alone the primary ones, appear in
every third rate “history of science” book. There are in effect
two Mesopotamian astral sciences — the one that exists in
the opening chapters of these general histories, and which
relies on regurgitated interpretations of the excellent, but now
dated, Science Awakening 2: The Birth of Astronomy (1974)
by B.L. van der Waerden, or even O. Neugebauer’s (1957)
The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2nd edition) - and the one
guarded by Assyriologists and a very few historians of astron-
omy.
Just as C.B.F. Walker and J. Britton’s article “Astronomy
and Astrology in Mesopotamia” in Astronomy before the
Telescope (1996) ed. C.B.F. Walker, pp. 42-67, does, so
Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia will serve in part to bridge
that gap between the popular, largely Eurocentric, and dated
comprehension of Mesopotamian astronomy-astrology, and
the one gradually emerging from within the field of Assyri-
ology, for it is aimed at non-specialists and specialists alike,
but is written by two of the most expert scholars in the field
— one whose widespread knowledge of ancient astronomy
and astrology is well known, and the other whose control of
the particular cuneiform sources is unparalleled1). Why then,
*) Based on a review of Hermann Hunger and David Pingree’s book
“Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia”. (Handbuch der Orientalistik, 44). E.J.
Brill Publishers N.V., Leiden, 1999. (24 cm, XVIII, 303). ISBN 90 04
10127 6; ISSN 0169-9423. Nlg. 176,-/$104.00.
1
) Hunger and Pingree, sometimes together, have published widely on
the divinatory material, and on the so-called non-mathematical astronomi-
cal texts. Their expertise on the technical aspects of the mathematical
Ephemerides and related texts has not, to my knowledge, been checked in
print before.
42
Because, so much more could have been done in a book like
this to dispel many of the popular myths still circulating about
cuneiform astronomy-astrology. There is no escaping the fact
that these two wonderful scholars have chosen still to impose
upon the textual material categories better suited to contem-
porary European celestial endeavours, and in so doing, I
argue, ensure that the lay reader will in some cases be pro-
foundly misled. It is for this reason that the Philistine must
keep away. They have, in effect, scanned the ancient sources
for elements akin to Western science, passing over in virtual
silence the context in which these achievements were made.
It is the approach which, perhaps of necessity, characterised
the early years of decipherment and the positivism of the
mid-twentieth century, but I cannot hide my disappointment
at the belligerent conservatism of this methodology here. No
history of Greek astronomy would nowadays shy away so
comprehensively from issues such as “authorial intent, or
anti-positivism” (do all the texts looked at really form part
of the same endeavour), or “commensurability” (has the best
effort been made to present each text in its own context,
according to local categories, and not necessarily to ours).
Dangers exist in generalising about any culture, and
Mesopotamia is no exception. Where are we introduced to
the particular groups of scribes and experts who wrote these
texts — what were their intentions? Were the questions they
were approaching really the same as those we address in the
21st century?2)
In due course, I shall return to these criticisms, particularly
in the light of the authors’ own comments in the introduc-
tion, and of the “handbook” nature of the HdO series. Before
that, I must come clean and admit that my own
Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology (MPAA) has
recently been published, and it too deals with the cuneiform
astral material, but with wholly different methodological
approaches, and arrives at some starkly different conclusions.
That work derived from my Ph.D., a copy of which was sent
to Hermann Hunger in 1998. Professor Hunger and I remain
in cordial contact on a number of issues connected to
cuneiform astronomy. David Pingree, I have not met. These,
then, are the personal agendas, if any, behind this review.
There is much to recommend Astral Sciences in
Mesopotamia, and it will undoubtedly find its place amongst
the better secondary sources. The presentation of the mater-
ial is in general lucid, and important new contributions of a
technical nature are made periodically. The book begins with
a dedication to earlier scholars, in particular to Otto Neuge-
bauer, and a useful list of the dates of kings, month names,
units, formulae and so forth. The introduction once again
cites Neugebauer, and explains that the book attempts to
“cover the astronomical material found in the tablets of both
omen texts and purely astronomical texts.” Here the prob-
lems start, for a fuller understanding of both the schemes in
the omen texts and the predictive methods used in the “purely
astronomical” cuneiform texts emerges only when the astrol-
ogy in which both are embedded is analysed. Taking the
schemes out of the omen series assigns to them a purpose not
supported by the evidence of the texts themselves. It makes
them appear as if their aim were to make accurate astro-
2
) On the “anti-generalisation” and “anti-piecemeal” approach see, for
example, G.E.R. Lloyd Adversaries and Authorities CUP 1996, pp. 3-6.
43 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVIII N° 1-2, januari-april 2001
nomical predictions. I show in MPAA that the schemes found
in the celestial divination series were instead astrological in
purpose. I also demonstrate that even the most sophisticated
of Ephemerides employ simplifications drawn from a back-
ground radiation of celestial divination and ideas as to the
construction of the universe. Privileging the latter with names
such as “purely astronomical” or “theoretical” associates the
efforts of their authors with those of contemporary
astronomers. Such a parallel is again misleading. I discuss
these alternative interpretations of the cuneiform astral mate-
rial in brief below, but for a fuller exposition the reader must
consult MPAA.
Hunger and Pingree, perhaps inadvertently, ensure that
future scholars, particularly non-Assyriologists, will consider
it legitimate to impose on the cuneiform material a unidirec-
tional advancement in “level of astronomical knowledge”
(Astral Sciences p3) from the OB period to the Hellenistic,
from “primitive astronomical schemes” to non-mathematical
predictions to “theoretical”, mathematical Ephemerides with-
out ever addressing the issue that each of these text groups
may have been quite different in purpose. That this interpre-
tation will be employed in generalisations as to the “evolu-
tion of science” is sadly very likely, and I am not convinced
that assisting this is wise.
This Handbook, as with others in the Handbuch der Ori-
entalistik series, attempts to encompass a field, almost as an
extended, commentated bibliography might. This can be very
useful, but there exists the possibility that a book like this
will serve to define the parameters of the discipline itself.
This is a danger particularly when a consensus is not present
within the field, and yet two leading lights collaborate as if
there were.
For example, Hunger and Pingree pp. 5f advocate what I
term in MPAA pp. 109f the “weak empiricist” model of the
origin of omens — a sign in the sky, say, was observed to
precede an event on earth, and when seen again was assumed
to anticipate, but without causing, the same event on earth
again. They write: “while there was an empirical basis for
assuming a connection between sign and following event, this
does not imply a notion of causality”. I find it hard to believe
that basic encodings that underpin the vast majority of omens,
such as “a bright Mars bodes ill”, just as “right bodes well”
could ever have derived from observation. Certain heavenly
bodies and phenomena were assigned values on the basis of
the perceived personalities of the associated deities, on the
basis of metaphor (e.g. haloes “pen in”, eclipses “wipe out
the brightest being on earth”), or on the basis of the internal
logic of creating an omen series (e.g. through paralleling, or
finding opposites), and so forth. “Impossible protases” in
omens — in this case celestial events that could never occur
— indicate that omens could be wholly invented, and as I
show in MPAA Ch.3 and App.3, the vast majority of celes-
tial omens were invented with little or no empirical input.
Those that appear to describe specific, observed celestial
and/or terrestrial happenings probably reflect the record of
events that corroborated the existing interpretation of the sig-
nificance to the earthly plane of a particular celestial config-
uration, thereby reversing the empiricist model. Similar crit-
icism was published by Koch-Westenholz in her
Mesopotamian Astrology (1995) pp. 13-19. Hunger and Pin-
gree’s view as to the origin of omens, an issue not without
significance when it comes to the understanding of cuneiform
predictive astronomy, hardly represents a consensus, then. A
44
non-specialist reading this section of their book would be
misled.
The authors list the principle publications of cuneiform
celestial omens, “proto-horoscopes” and other “astrological”
texts dating from OB to Hellenistic times in chapter 1 (pp. 7-
31), indicating the general contents of the known composi-
tions. As they admit in their introduction, they have not
attempted to deal with this material exhaustively, citing the
enormous number of unpublished texts, and referring readers
to Koch-Westenholz’s book. They propose that a successor
“handbook” should in due course treat the material more
fully, thereby anticipating that their unhappy division of
cuneiform astral concerns into the modern “astrological” and
“astronomical” categories will continue in the future. The
fact is, more than enough “astrological” material has already
been published to make it apparent that it and cuneiform pre-
dictive astronomy should be studied together. Both formed
part of one “discipline” so far as the particular ancient scribes
of Mesopotamia were concerned.
For example, the early period “astronomy” treated in
Chapter 2 A (pp. 32-112) is almost all to be found within
compositions that are explicitly called “astrological” by mod-
ern scholars (e.g. within the celestial omen series known as
Enuma Anu Ellil), or in compositions that also contain omens
(e.g. the series known as Mul.Apin — called “astronomical”
by its modern editors, though this merely reflects their inter-
pretations of its contents). I argue in MPAA that none of this
so-called “early” or “primitive” astronomy is “astronomi-
cal” as we would understand the meaning of the word — the
attempt to predict celestial behaviour, to know when and
where a given phenomenon will next occur. Of course, one
might point to the etymology of astro-nomos to argue that a
mere star list constitutes “star ordering” and thus astronomy,
but a difference of textual intent is implied by modern com-
mentators who call Enuma Anu Ellil “astrological” and
Mul.Apin “astronomical” even though each contains near-
identical schemes of lunar behaviour. Merely because
Mul.Apin contains many such schemes and a few omens
hardly makes it “astronomical”. Equally, Enuma Anu Ellil is
not “astrological” only because the reverse is true. I demon-
strate in MPAA that the so-called “primitive” astronomical
schemes were instead designed to elicit prognostications on
the basis that observed behaviour corresponding with that
anticipated by the scheme boded well, and the reverse boded
ill. They were astrological in purpose — designed to make
the repetitive behaviour of the heavenly bodies, as much as
their irregular behaviour, amenable to interpretation by the
diviners. The potential of schemes such as the lunar visibil-
ity/invisibility scheme of Enuma Anu Ellil Tablet 14 (EAE
14) and Mul.Apin (see Astral Sciences pp. 44-50), or the
Venus scheme of Enuma Anu Ellil Tablet 63 §II, to predict
heavenly behaviour should not be confused with the actual
intention of those compositions. Simply because prediction
interests us, does not mean that it interested the authors of
EAE or Mul.Apin. Just such an activity did emerge in
Mesopotamia, only later, in the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Again, I argue this in MPAA.
Hunger and Pingree’s discussion of Enuma Anu Ellil
Tablet 63 will outline what is at stake here. They state (p.
38): “the most interesting part of the Venus Tablet (= EAE
63) for the historian of mathematical astronomy is section
II”. In this section a scheme operates in which the visibility
intervals of Venus in the West and East are said to be 8
45 ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA
months and 5 days long, and the invisibility intervals 7 days
and 3 months respectively. These intervals are expressed in
omen protases (the “if” clauses). The total synodic period of
Venus according to this scheme lasts 19 months and 17 days.
If we moderns extrapolate from this, we can discover that by
treating each “month” as 30 days a period of 587 days for
Venus’s “synodic period” (p. 39) emerges. This is not too
far from reality, and can be compared with a Mayan scheme
in which the invisibility period in the East is coincidentally
90 days. This is how Hunger and Pingree proceed. However,
this scheme is not “astronomical” as we would understand
the meaning of that word. Months are not all 30 days long.
About half last 29 days. The actual “synodic period” implied
by 19 months and 17 days is some 5671⁄2 days, well short of
reality. If Venus actually rose on a date noted for heliacal ris-
ing in the scheme, the “predicted” dates for its subsequent
setting and rising would not be close to those in the civil cal-
endar on which Venus actually set and rose again. Is this just
poor astronomy? No.
Let us look again at the numbers used in the scheme. They
are either round (8m + 5d, 3m), or significant (7d). In other
parts of Enuma Anu Ellil different numbers are used for some
of these intervals. Both 8 and 9 months are attested for the
lengths of the visibility periods — other round numbers.
Hunger and Pingree note this on pp. 40-1, but extraordinar-
ily argue that the 9 month interval represents 2651⁄2 days,
extrapolating this length not from the 30-day month that
suited their aims in EAE 63 §II, but from the mean length of
a month, namely 291⁄2 days, thereby making the 9 month
interval appear more accurate and so more astronomical.
They even suggest that the 9 month visibility interval repre-
sents “an extreme” (p. 41) rather than a “mean” value. Such
is the speculation that is consequent on seeking elements akin
to modern science in ancient sources. Also, what was the pur-
pose of comparing the EAE 63 §II scheme with a Mayan
scheme, the context of which is not explained at all? Are the
authors suggesting that such schemes represent a universal
stage in the evolution of predictive astronomy? If this is the
model of astronomical advancement they are laying upon the
cuneiform material, they should state as much.
I propose that these schemes in Enuma Anu Ellil represent
idealisations of Venus’s periodic behaviour. Firstly, arguing
on p39 of Astral Sciences that the evidence of EAE 63 §II is
that “the periodicity of Venus’s phenomena was already
recognised by about 1000 BC” rather understates the case. I
would suggest that such a recognition was made at least as
early as it was known that the morning and evening star were
one and the same heavenly body, and that was probably
known by the early 3rd millennium BC3). Secondly, equating
the prediction of phenomena with an awareness of their peri-
odicity in the line on p. 40: “an awareness of the pre-
dictability (or periodicity) of planetary phenomena”, unjus-
tifiably imposes on the material a modern conception of the
use of such an awareness. It would be like saying that the
ancient scribes of Mesopotamia predicted that all months
would be 30 days long simply because this was the ideal,
round number they assigned to that phenomenon. I hardly
think it could have passed unnoticed that barely half of all
3
) An early 3M BC seal from the former Erlenmeyer collection states
in a series of five Sumerian signs “festival Inana evening/morning star”.
See Archaic Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Adminis-
tration in the Ancient Near East ed. H. Nissen, 1993 p17.
46
months last 30 days, and I do not therefore consider the
inscription of 30 days for a lunation to be “astronomy”4).
Neither do I consider the writing down that Venus is visible
for approximately 8-9 months, and invisible either for some
3 months or a few days to be “astronomy”, unless we choose
to include under that rubric all writing on the phenomena of
the heavens. The Venus scheme is hardly “mathematical
astronomy”, as implied by Hunger and Pingree in the quote
cited above. Such knowledge of Venus’s behaviour was with-
out doubt current for centuries, if not millennia before 1000
BC, but not until later were accurate predictions of the
planet’s behaviour recorded in clay.
Instead, in EAE 63 §II, and in the other parts of EAE in
which such ideal schemes are recorded, the knowledge of
planetary periodicity was employed by celestial diviners to
elicit prognostications from the unexceptional and repetitive
behaviour of the heavenly bodies. While in EAE 63 §II the
apodoses of the omens relate only to the months in which
Venus was ideally to rise, and not to each day of the year
(itself a fact worth noting), other evidence gathered in my
MPAA shows that so far as Enuma Anu Ellil and related texts
went, planets being observed to behave according to that
anticipated by the ideal schemes boded well, and vice versa.
By studying the Venus scheme of EAE 63 §II in context, one
is thereby able to see in it something at once removed from
astronomy as we know it, and at the same time more sophis-
ticated — an embellishing of (probably) common knowledge
about the broad behaviour of the heavenly bodies with round
and significant numbers in order that their dates of rising and
setting be encoded for the purposes of divination (without the
need to construct hundreds of omens, one for each heliacal
event and for each day of the year). Nowhere to be found is
the intention to make that behaviour predictable to the point,
say, where it need not be observed at all (a service provided
to us by modern astronomy). On the contrary, the schemes
meant that not only had the month of rising or setting, the
colours and concomitant meteorological effects to be noted
by the diviners, but the date of rising or setting had to be
remarked. So, despite the prognoses of the omens in EAE 63
depending solely on the month of appearance, this, I suggest,
explains why a day to day record of Venus observations was
made during king AmmiÒaduqa’s reign. The dates of rising
and setting were not directly ominous, but indirectly so once
compared to those anticipated by the ideal scheme. I further
argue in MPAA that the significance of planets behaving
according, or not according, to ideals outlined in the divina-
tory schemes provided the motivation for recording the dates
of heliacal events and luni-solar phenomena in the astro-
nomical Diaries and related texts (see below), and that under
the particular conditions imposed on the area by the rule of
the last Assyrian kings so systematically was this undertaken
that it made possible the discovery of periodicities in that
database that in due course made real astronomical predic-
tion possible.
My criticisms of pp. 32-84 of Astral Sciences are similar.
On p42 ina la minâti could be as well translated “not accord-
4
) A lunation is a celestial phenomenon whose periodicity is immedi-
ately apparent, but whose length cannot be predicted merely on the basis
of a knowledge of such periodicity. Not until the records of other associ-
ated phenomena were made did it become possible to predict the lengths
of months. Lunar behaviour indicates how the heavens could be recognised
as periodic, and yet be considered unpredictable, in complete contrast to
Hunger and Pingree’s supposition quoted above.
47 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVIII N° 1-2, januari-april 2001
ing to its count” as “not at the calculated time”. To follow
this with “there is no indication… of how the calculation was
made”, will surely mislead the non-Assyriologist into think-
ing that mathematically-based eclipse predictions were being
made at this early time. The “count” may just as well have
been compared to numbers of an astrological nature. Equally,
when noting on p43 that “it is clear that certain characteris-
tics of the last visibility of the Moon, such as Venus’s enter-
ing into its crescent, were believed to signify that a lunar
eclipse would occur in the next month or several months
later”, it would assist the non-astronomer to add that there is
no astronomical basis for such assertions. They are in effect
“astrological” predictions of eclipses.
Hunger and Pingree remark on p47 that the 2:1 ratio of the
longest to the shortest daylight employed in EAE 14,
Mul.Apin and elsewhere is “incorrect” for Mesopotamia.
When judged according to the demands for accuracy made
by modern astronomy this may be true, but from a divinatory
point of view a 2:1 ratio, and other small-number ratios, were
perfectly correct — ideal in fact. For my comments on tim-
ing in a divinatory context see now Brown, Fermor and
Walker “The Water Clock in Mesopotamia” in the recent
AfO volume. Incidentally, text BM 17175+ referred to on p50
does not use minas, as implied by Hunger and Pingree. It
might just as well refer to US (*60).
Hunger and Pingree’s closing comments on the lunar vis-
ibility/invisibility schemes of EAE 14 and Mul.Apin on p50
summarise their view: “It is clear from this review of the ele-
ments of astronomy found in Enuma Anu Enlil that by the
end of the second millennium BC…the inhabitants of
Mesopotamia recognised the periodicity of many celestial
phenomena and had devised methods to predict them…..In
particular, some periodic deviations from mean time-inter-
vals were being described by linear zigzag functions, some
of which were modified by the intrusion of non-linear ele-
ments”. I refer the reader to my comments above, and note
that “inhabitants of Mesopotamia” may be a shorthand for
“specialist cuneiform Scholars from Mesopotamia”, but is
still unfortunate. It implies a sharing of knowledge with the
populace that is unwarranted. More importantly, anyone not
familiar with actual lunar behaviour would believe that the
“zigzag functions” and “non-linear elements” of EAE 14 in
some way rendered lunar behaviour “predictable”. They did
not. The lunar scheme referred to was based on a few, basic,
ideal assumptions — namely, that the month lasted 30 days,
the year 12 such months, that lunar opposition occurred on
the 15th of each month, and the longest to the shortest days
were in a ratio of 2:1. The remainder of the scheme is little
more than a mathematical elaboration. Mostly, linear inter-
polation was used to generate numbers for the other days of
the month, but in one case a geometric gloss was added. Nei-
ther the linear nor the geometric embellishment generated
values for the length of lunar visibility or invisibility that
were particularly close to reality, based as they were on ide-
alisations and a false assumption about lunar behaviour, and
not on observations beyond those needed to formulate the
most basic comprehension of lunar behaviour — namely that
the Moon waxes for the first half of the month and wanes for
the second. The schemes were perfect, however, for produc-
ing ideal values for these intervals, which could then be com-
pared with observations and interpreted accordingly — num-
bers that were useful to diviners. In i.NAM.gis.Ìur.an.ki.a
(pp. 83-4) a scheme of this kind is indeed referred to as an
48
arû — a term which I argue in MPAA refers to “mathemat-
ical elaboration”. Variant elaborations were entertained, as
K.90 (discussed Astral Sciences pp. 49-50) shows, and “num-
ber play” of this sort also exemplifies HS 245 (discussed
Astral Sciences pp. 53-4). Mathematical elaborations on ideal
approximations do not constitute astronomy, despite superfi-
cial similarities. It is more closely related to the kind of
numerical speculation that characterises the rest of
i.NAM.gis.Ìur.an.ki.a, and significantly the planet section of
Mul.Apin ii I 38-67 — discussed Astral Sciences pp. 73-5,
in which various periods of visibility and invisibility are
derived through simple multiplying and dividing.
An example of the authors’ unjustified positivism5) is pro-
vided on p62, where a comparison between a description of
star paths in Mul.Apin and Enuma elis is made. Having
argued that in Mul.Apin the star paths describe strips of the
sky that encircle the heavens, delimited in width by arcs of
the eastern horizon, they suggest that the description in the
creation epic of Marduk assigning gates along the horizon
through which the stars pass, and his placing of Nebiru
between Ellil and Ea, is earlier. They proceed to argue that
this provides a terminus ante quem for Enuma elis’s compo-
sition. Aside from the obvious criticism that Enuma elis is a
literary text whose aims were very different from those of
Mul.Apin, I’d say that “gates” were a fair description of
“arcs on the horizon”. Incidentally, the star paths are attested
in KUB 4 47:43f, a composition of MB date at latest. This
text should have been noted by the authors. I would suggest,
then, that the star paths, very much as used in Mul.Apin, were
probably current in late OB times (see MPAA App.1 §13).
They are but one of many elements of Mul.Apin with OB
precursors. Hunger and Pingree maintain (p. 58) that
Mul.Apin “was composed in Assyria in about -1000” on the
basis of their retrocalculations of star positions. I am unable
to comment on the susceptibility of their conclusions to vari-
ations in latitude or era, but while accepting that an Assyrian
redaction of c. 1000 BC undoubtedly existed, I believe it to
be more likely that a complete version of the text was com-
posed first in the south, precisely because Mul.Apin drew so
heavily on Babylonian sources. See also MPAA pp. 115-20
and p259, and BM 77054 edited in A. George’s review of
Hunger & Pingree’s edition of Mul.Apin in ZA 81 (1991) pp.
301-6 — a reference missing from Astral Science’s excellent
bibliography. Again, the authors comment on p63 that “the
person who composed (in this case section 3 of Astrolabe B)
totally misunderstood the nature of his source (already in —
1000!) and unfortunately misled several scholars of this cen-
tury”. Such positivism is, of course, unwarranted. This sec-
tion of Astrolabe B may be “meaningless as an astronomical
document” precisely because that was the intention of its
author all along.
When discussing Mul.Apin’s various intercalation schemes
on pp. 75-9, the authors repeatedly emphasise the accuracy
or otherwise of the results of these methods for providing the
“scribes” with the necessary criteria to determine when to
5
) Note J. Black’s comments in Reading Sumerian Poetry (1998) pp. 6-
7 in “Near Eastern scholarship — the positivist approach ….treats ‘literary
texts’ exactly as any other form of ‘historical text’, discarding …any attempt
to account for precisely those distinctive qualities that make literature ‘lit-
erary’…The result has been that literary works have been trawled for evi-
dence of social conditions or historical facts, as sources for the history of
thought or religion.”
49 ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA
add in an additional month, and so keep the lunar and solar
calendars more or less synchronised. It has become a com-
monplace in studies of cuneiform astral science to argue that
the regulation of the calendar provided one of, if not the,
prime motivation for the creation of mathematical astron-
omy6). Hunger and Pingree argue that the intercalation
schemes in Mul.Apin served just this purpose. I disagree. The
calendar was regulated at least as far back as the third mil-
lennium BC, as the existence of month names connected with
seasonal activities indicate. The basic rule of thumb, that one
additional month every three years or so would keep the sea-
sons and the lunar calendar together, was without doubt
known long before the composition of Mul.Apin. Similarly,
the broad correspondence of the astrolabes with reality shows
that months were associated early with the rising of particu-
lar stars. (The small difference between the solar and side-
real year was not of relevance). Not until the very latest peri-
ods was the civil calendar regulated in a systematic fashion.
Kings determined when intercalary months should occur, and
with some notable exceptions they kept more or less to the
rule of thumb. A mere count of the number of intercalary
months inserted over the past few years, perhaps combined
with the observation that some bright star was rising in the
wrong month, would have been more than adequate to regu-
late the calendar.
In the astrolabes, for example, the (probably common-
place) data on star and month associations served to embell-
ish a scheme of very little calendrical significance, but of div-
inatory import. The various versions of this scheme provided
the diviners with information on the month in which a
star/constellation should ideally rise. If it did rise then, this
boded well, and so forth7). The astrolabes formed part of the
divinatory tradition. Their close relationship to Enuma Anu
Ellil is well known. Some modern descriptions of them, how-
ever, would make one feel that these documents were prac-
tical aids to calendar regulation8). I am sure that it would be
pretty clear to farmers and overseers when the lunar year was
in need of an additional month, without their needing to con-
sult the authors of the astrolabes. I should imagine that the
aspiration of modern academics to be consulted by govern-
ment underlies such views. The intention of these texts has
again been confused with their potential, as we moderns
might see it. The same applies to the intercalation schemes
of Mul.Apin. Whether based on stars or on the movement of
the Moon, they are again elaborations, sometimes numerical,
drawn from commonplace star lore and the simple rule of
thumb stated above for the purposes of divination. They are
not attempts at regulating the calendar. All this is explained
more fully in MPAA, pp. 115-6, 118-20. The reader may be
curious, though, as to how a scheme designed to elicit evi-
dence that intercalation was necessary could have been of use
to a diviner. The text known as The Babylonian Diviner’s
6
) E.g. Chadwick BSMS 24 (1992) p15: “… most Assyriologists and
historians of science….maintain that the real impetus for the development
of astronomy came from the need to develop a reliable and workable cal-
endar”.
7
) Exemplified by the omens quoted in Reiner & Pingree Enuma Anu
Enlil, Tablets 50-51, BPO2 (1981) pp. 56-61.
8
) E.g. W. Horowitz Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (1998) p164:
“it was essential that farmers had access to an accurate means of deter-
mining dates for farming tasks….it is probable that the earliest astrolabes
were intended, in part at least, to help farmers determine the optimum dates
for farming activities.”
50
Manual9) answers this, for it describes just such a scheme
and explains that it provides the Namburbu, or the means by
which to avert prognosticated evil. By intercalating, an event
anticipated or observed to occur in one month can be made
to occur in another, often with a different prognosis. This
accounts for why in the 7th century BC Report10) Asaredu
writes: “the lord of the kings will say: the month is not (yet)
finished, why do you write to me good or bad (boding
omens),” the implication of which is that not until the month
end were omens sent to the king, and that they could vary
from good to bad. I suggest that this was precisely because
of the possibilities afforded by intercalation for changing the
prognostication. More on this in MPAA pp. 121-2.
Hunger and Pingree have misunderstood the texts they dis-
cuss on pp. 32-84. They are not “early astronomical”, for in
all cases I assert that these documents were instead numeri-
cal elaborations (as the authors accept, incidentally, for HS
245, the shadow table section of Mul.Apin, and describe
without comment for AO 6478 on pp. 54, 80 and 85-6,
respectively), drawing on traditional and basic information
about the broad behaviour of the heavens. This information
was expressed in terms of categories of constellations, direc-
tions, orientations, heliacal phenomena, and included a recog-
nition of the planets, and an awareness that their phenomena
were periodic without necessarily being predictable.
Assigned to certain of these recurring phenomena were
round-number or “ideal” values, such as 30 days to a month,
360 to a year, 9 months to Venus’s visibility period, 1 inter-
calation to every 3 years, and so forth. The source of the
round numbers that lie behind the ideal schemes is to be
found in indigenous ideas as to nature of the universe, a field
explored in MPAA Ch.5. The usefulness of the ideal schemes
to the diviners is clear, for it permitted them to encode the
repeating behaviour of the heavens with meaning, and assign
value to the temporal component of an event, just as certain
of the planets, constellations, directions, orientations and
events were encoded as either benefic or malefic. Just as the
preserved celestial omens represent the textual elaborations
of these encodings, so the ideal schemes are the numerical
elaborations on the associated round numbers, and were
encoded with the idea that behaviour according to the ideal
bodes well, otherwise it bodes ill. It is little wonder, then, that
the ideal schemes are to be found embedded within the omen
corpus. Isolating them, as have Hunger and Pingree, makes
them appear astronomical when they are not. There is no evi-
dence that the ideal schemes were used to make accurate
astronomical predictions, and plenty of evidence that they
were used for the purposes of divination. When astronomi-
cal prediction is first attested in texts dating to the 8th and 7th
centuries BC it is both in its infancy, and different from what
could have been achieved using the ideal schemes. To the
best of our knowledge, it therefore represents an innovation
of that period, as I assert in MPAA.
From pp. 84f the authors discuss the ziqpu lists and so-
called Gu Text, which is related. Both probably played an
astronomical rôle in the late NA period and thereafter. Small
but important improvements in the understanding of these
compositions have been made, for which the authors are to
be thanked. The analysis of W 22281a as a precursor to the
9
) A.L. Oppenheim JNES 33 (1974) pp. 197-220.
10
) H. Hunger Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings = (1992) ARAK
No. 338:4
51 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVIII N° 1-2, januari-april 2001
Gu Text on p99 is very interesting. The authors also bring
into relief for the first time the complex links between the Gu
Text, the Antagubba/Antasurra texts and the astrolabes —
(pp. 55, 99-100), and successfully demolish Koch’s interpre-
tation of the obscure dalbanna texts (pp. 100-111).
On pp. 116-38 Hunger and Pingree discuss the observa-
tions recorded, largely in the form of omens, in the Reports
and Letters sent to the Assyrian kings mostly in the 7th cen-
tury BC. They quote extensively, but summarise briefly on
p138 stating: “what they recorded, however, being undata-
ble and imprecise with respect to time and longitude, was
useless for the purposes of constructing mathematical mod-
els.” They seem to ignore the important fact that what celes-
tial information is preserved in this correspondence is mostly
in the form of protases. So as not to have to generate omens
for every day of the year, every US of the heavens, every
colour tone, and so forth, the ominous categories were delib-
erately broad. The Reports and Letters were never intended
to provide the database from which astronomical parameters
could be derived for the purposes of prediction. Why should
the authors be surprised then not to find many examples of
accurate recording? This is not a reason, however, to suggest
that the authors of the Reports and Letters were not them-
selves interested in accurate astronomical prediction or were
not capable of undertaking it. Despite the intention of this
correspondence being primarily divinatory, enough clues
remain in these documents to suggest that in Assyria, just as
in Babylonia, accurate recording and early astronomical pre-
dictions were being made in the 7th century BC. Full details
can be found in MPAA pp. 189-206, but some highlights
include:
“[Last year], it (Jupiter) became visible on the 22nd of
month II in [Perseus], it disappeared in month I of the [pre-
sent] year on the 29th” (Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and
Babylonian Scholars (1993) = LABS no. 362:3’f, see also no.
100:5).
“Mars which stands inside Scorpius is about to move out;
(not) until the 25th of (month IV?) will it move out of Scor-
pius” (Hunger ARAK no. 387:3).
“Mars was sighted in month V; now it has approached
within 21⁄2 spans (u†u/ru†u) of Libra” (LABS no. 172:4’).
The first shows that the precise dates of earlier heliacal
events were recorded by the authors, no doubt so that they
could interpret the visibility and invisibility periods accord-
ingly. The last two examples show that the constellation
boundaries were well defined, and that the rough rate at
which Mars, and no doubt the other planets, move after a sta-
tionary point was known. The distances between the planets
and the constellations were carefully measured in fingers and
spans, and perhaps also in US since this unit is used to mea-
sure a celestial distance in the so-called Mercury Observa-
tion Texts also found in Nineveh and dating to the late NA
period. These texts are mentioned by the authors on p139.
The reason I suggest that the unit used therein measured dis-
tances and not time is because of the use of the phrase “gub
…gar-ma”, “stood to the left” when describing the interval
in US between Mercury and the Sun. Hunger and Pingree
treat it as a time unit. See further my “The Cuneiform Con-
ception of Celestial Space and Time” Cambridge Archaeo-
logical Journal 10:1 (2000).
Also, evidence from Nineveh indicates that a number of
characteristic periods for the planets were known in the 7th
century BC, that the calendar was regulated with sufficient
52
care to make possible the use of these periods for astronom-
ical prediction, and most importantly predictions were indeed
being made, albeit quite elementary ones. This in itself serves
only to show that astronomy, as we define it, was is in its
infancy in the 7th century BC, making the “astronomical”
aspect of the ideal schemes of the earlier divinatory tradition
even less likely.
On pp. 139-59 the authors describe the so-called “Astro-
nomical Diaries”, or “Diaries” for short. They argue that
these documents were “intended, as far as the celestial obser-
vations are concerned, for astronomical purposes”, and were
not “intimately connected with the Mesopotamian practice
of reading celestial omens” (p. 139). Indeed they argue (p.
144) that “almost all the phenomena regarded as ominous in
Enuma Anu Enlil (exceptional are haloes…) and constantly
observed, recorded, and interpreted for the court at Nineveh
were assiduously ignored” in the Diaries. Again the authors
seek a division between an astronomical intention and an
astrological one, attempting to find what is a modern
dichotomy in the ancient material. The describe on pp. 139-
40 some differences between the data recorded in the royal
correspondence and those in the Diaries. There will, of
course, be differences between texts composed in Babylonia
probably for the use by temple personnel, and those com-
posed largely in the north, in Letter or Report format and
intended for the eyes of the king. This can hardly be used to
suggest, as do Hunger and Pingree, that the Diaries were not
primarily composed for the purposes of assisting celestial
diviners in their work, and that they somehow do not form
part of the same astronomical-astrological tradition as Enuma
Anu Ellil.
On pp. 97-103 of MPAA I demonstrate in detail that the
Diaries were in fact fundamentally influenced by the divina-
tory tradition (and indeed to some extent vice versa), with-
out suggesting that the Diaries merely provided the raw celes-
tial data from which the diviners drew prognostications. They
also came to serve a new purpose, namely the eliciting of
periods between recurring phenomena, which in due course
made astronomical prediction possible. I indicate, however,
that there is no evidence that from the beginning the Diaries
were intended to produce these parameters. Rather, the pro-
duction of a continuous record was all important, and it was
the desire to fill in the gaps in the data-record caused by bad
weather, or missed sightings, that led to the discovery of peri-
odicities. This in turn led to astronomical prediction, but I see
the latter not as a primary aim (as if all ancient peoples had
the same desire as us), but as a by-product of the exercise of
keeping a continuous record of significant phenomena. Per-
haps, in due course, some phenomena not subject to regular
recurrence were eliminated from this record as its usefulness
to the diviners, for whom astronomical prediction provided
them with a small advantage when it came to currying royal
favour, became apparent. Importantly, the oldest Diary
attested was written at least a century after the programme
began, so much (but not all, see below) of this elimination
would have already occurred before the mid-7th century BC.
These various points are closely argued in MPAA, and evi-
dence provided accordingly. My conclusions do not emerge
from an assumption about an alleged universal interest in
astronomical prediction, but from the sources themselves.
For example, the Diaries record luni-solar intervals known
now as the “lunar six”. Remarkably, periodicities in certain
sums of these intervals recur after 223 and 229 months. The
53 ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA
periodicities could not have been discovered before an
extended record of the magnitudes of these intervals had been
made. The question arises, then, as to why such intervals
were recorded in the first place. They were not in themselves
obvious parameters to record for the purpose of eliciting
astronomical parameters, but neither were they directly omi-
nous. However, just such intervals were those predicted by
the ideal lunar visibility/invisibility schemes of compositions
such as EAE 14, Mul.Apin, and i.NAM.gis.Ìur.an.ki.a. It was
these that made the “lunar six” important, and accounts for
their record in the Diaries. Incidentally, the oldest Diary does
not record any lunar six values, but preserves in line 6 a
phrase, used commonly in omens to describe the good-bod-
ing occurrence of the Moon and Sun on opposite horizons at
Sunrise: “on the 14th, one god was seen with another”. In the
next attested diary, dating to 568 BC, in line 4 this same
phrase is repeated and immediately followed by “4 NA”,
where NA is the lunar six value corresponding to the inter-
val between Sunrise and Moonset, and 4 US is its magnitude.
Thereafter, in the Diaries NA is used without the divinatory
phrase. This shows most clearly the intimate relationship
between what was recorded in the Diaries and the tradition
of celestial divination, and also suggests how the terminol-
ogy in the former was tightened up over time, probably as
the success of predictability was realised, and the usefulness
of these discoveries to the diviners made apparent.
The same applies to the dates of heliacal setting and rising,
the record of which provided the means by which long and
accurate periods after which the same phenomena recurred in
the same place could be determined. Dates of heliacal rising
were not in general directly ominous, but dates were recorded
in order that the actual invisibility or visibility intervals could
be determined and compared with those anticipated by the
ideal schemes, and interpreted accordingly, as noted above.
The dates of these heliacal events, just as were the dates and
magnitudes of the lunar six, were indirectly ominous, and this
accounts for why they were recorded.
These are but two examples of how the divinatory mater-
ial can help explain the shape of the so-called “astronomi-
cal” material in the Diaries. It also gives the lie to Hunger
and Pingree’s comment in point 6 on p140 that periodic phe-
nomena were not ominous, because they are computable.
This is a largely western conception, that omens should be
surprises. It is not true universally, for anticipated solar
eclipses can still bode ill in some parts of the world even
today, and in Mesopotamia, in particular, predicted events
still had to be observed for the associated, non-predictable
weather and so forth added to their overall interpretations.
More importantly, the regular running of the universe, and
not merely its anomalies, was encoded with meaning by the
celestial diviners who composed in cuneiform. A day, or
month reaching its “normal” length boded well. Events
occurring according to the ideal construction of the universe
boded well. In 1978, p634, Oppenheim also wrote that “after
experience had taught (Mesopotamian man) to recognise a
pattern in the sequence of certain events and in the pre-
dictable features of specific phenomena, he considered any
deviations and irregularities to be endowed with meaning…”,
but was similarly incorrect as to the significance of regular
and non-deviant behaviour in the skies. Thus a view as to
basis for omens significantly affects one’s view as to the basis
for astronomy in Mesopotamia, a point with which I began
this critique of Astral Sciences.
54
So, while the Diaries performed a different rôle to that of
the celestial omen series, the Ninevite Letters or Reports, they
were part of the same astronomical-astrological tradition, and,
I suggest were authored by the same scholars. Indeed as much
was indicated by the diviner in LABS no.160:40 who stated
that he has read Enuma Anu Ellil and “made astral observa-
tions”, a phrase which probably refers to work rather like that
connected with the compilations of the Diaries. In later times
the authors of the mathematical astronomical texts dating to
last centuries BC sometimes called themselves “scribes of
Enuma Anu Ellil”, attesting to the continued intimacy, at least
as far as the scribes themselves were concerned, between
celestial divination and compositions whose purpose was
astronomical prediction. The relationship between the Diaries
and the mathematical astronomical material is close. Indeed
the author of the Diary dating to 322 BC composed the text
ACT 816, a Procedure Text for Mercury, and a descendant of
his copied Mul.Apin11).
On p144 Hunger and Pingree note the reasons for suppos-
ing that the Diaries and the associated observation pro-
gramme began in the first year of Nabonassar, 747 BC. The
well-known evidence they cite demonstrates only that we
should not expect to find such records dating to a period
before that date. I note in MPAA pp. 201-2 and 205 that the
lunar eclipse calculated to “pass by” 60 (US) after day break,
and datable to 731 BC in LBAT 1414:Iif, if not a retrocalcu-
lation, but a prediction, perhaps relied on the characteristic
period of 223 months, or 6585 days + c.1,50 US, known as
the Saros. Indeed, I tentatively suggest that the obscure fig-
ures of 1,40 and 1,50 at the beginning of LBAT 1413:Ii (a
later copy of a record dating to 747 BC) and LBAT 1414:Ii
respectively, may have referred to the US part of the Saros
period. Without myself seeking too hard for elements akin to
astronomy, I would say that there is fairly good evidence that
an observation programme leading to the discovery of the
Saros period preceded 747 BC, at least by some 18 years!
The authors provide on pp. 159-81 a very useful discus-
sion of the Normal Star Almanacs, the Almanacs, the Goal
Year Texts and the Planet Records in the light of the phe-
nomena recorded in the Diaries, and where possible in the
light of the dates and locations calculated for those phenom-
ena in the preserved Ephemerides. Much of this material,
aside from the Diaries and Ephemerides, is not yet available
to the non-specialist. On pp. 172-3 the authors summarise:
“no one (of the Almanacs, Normal Star Almanacs or Goal
Year Texts) derives from another nor, because of their com-
pleteness, from our Diaries”, and reveal that records other
than the preserved Diaries must have been present in Baby-
lon. Equally, they show that the Planet Records were com-
piled from Diary-like records, but even when Diaries and
Planet Records from the same years are preserved, the latter
contain more or different data from those in the relevant
Diaries. The Diaries, therefore, constitute but a part of the
record of celestial observations made in Babylon and Uruk.
The reference on p162 to Hunger’s unpublished study of the
dates derived from Goal Year Texts and those recorded in the
Almanacs, indicates that we must continue to refine our sup-
positions about the interrelationships of the so-called non-
mathematical texts. We await Hunger’s publication or repub-
lication of the Planet Records, as these bear significantly on
11
) A. Slotsky The Bourse of Babylon (1997) p101.
55 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVIII N° 1-2, januari-april 2001
the development of predictive astronomy in Babylonia after
the 7th century BC.
On p180 the authors remark that the discrepancies between
the times and positions recorded for various celestial events
in the Diaries (the result of a mixture of observations and cal-
culations designed to produce completeness in the record)
and those in the Ephemerides “does not prove that the
authors of the Diaries never used the Ephemerides, but it does
show that there was some distance between the observers and
compilers of Diaries and the men who computed the
Ephemerides”. This “some distance” reflects rather a mod-
ern attitude towards the value to be assigned to mathemati-
cal astronomy, as opposed to astronomy based directly on
period relations, or perhaps even the distance between those
modern scholars who have mastered the intricacies of the
Ephemerides and those who have not. Since both means of
astronomical prediction coexisted in Babylon and Uruk at
least until the demise of cuneiform itself, and in the light of
the scribe cited above who authored both Ephemerides (or at
least the Procedure Texts lying behind them) and Diaries,
such a “distance” between some observers/compilers and
“men who computed” was not present at that time.
It is not known to what extent computed times and loca-
tions were used for events in the past, and thus could be com-
pared with the many records of observations (rather as is
done in historical astronomy), or for events in the future. Cer-
tainly, at least from NA times eclipses and some planetary
events were predicted in advance, and this no doubt contin-
ued through to Hellenistic and later times. However, the com-
piling of “horoscopes” meant that there were also good rea-
sons to calculate celestial configurations in the past, even if
the Diary-like record was complete. Unfortunately, we still
know so little of the context in which the preserved texts were
written. Allusions to writing boards of “short” Diaries (Astral
Sciences p176), the recognition that observational records
other than Diaries must have been present in Babylon and
Uruk, and the existence of the still poorly understood “Pro-
cedure Texts” show only that what has survived is but a tiny
fraction of what was produced at the time, and probably an
unrepresentative fraction at that, since what was written on
clay (and therefore could survive) was perhaps deliberately
conservative, and closest to the ancient traditions of celestial
divination and its philosophy as to the structure of the uni-
verse — in other words “legitimate”. I suggest in MPAA that
all the surviving “solutions” to the question of the time and
location of a heavenly event were “legitimate” in this sense,
whether they were observed, calculated from period relations
and early observations, or calculated from a mathematical
scheme dependent on but one earlier observation. Even the
most sophisticated of such mathematical schemes adhered to
age-old techniques and forms, rendering them “legitimate”,
despite superficial similarities to modern approaches — see
MPAA pp. 173-89. All the solutions were “good enough” if
they predicted the correct day (more or less), the location to
the nearest few degrees, and did not fail to anticipate eclipses.
The precise times and positions predicted in the Ephemerides
were in large part a by-product of the techniques used, and
did not reflect their actual accuracy. The extent to which pre-
dicted longitudes could be judged against those observed was
limited in the pre-telescopic era, and predictions to the near-
est fractions of a tithi in planetary Ephemerides were appar-
ently rounded to the nearest day. If predicting future events,
these “solutions” provided the diviner with sufficient data on
56
when and where to look, for, as noted, even predicted events
had to be observed for their full interpretation to be gleaned.
If retrocalculations, the “solutions” provided the diviner with
sufficiently accurate data with which to draw up a “horo-
scope”, or equivalent. It is a modern conception that the more
accurate solutions will be favoured over the less accurate, that
accuracy alone will make some solutions more “legitimate”
than others. In the absence of any checking of the fine details
of predictions, and providing all the solutions were “good
enough” according to the criteria noted above, they would
all remain legitimate if they adhered to old forms, and to the
prevailing underlying conception of the nature of the universe
(see MPAA Ch.5.1.3). Such is even the case for some mod-
ern astrologers, for as I was recently witness to, the latest
refinements to the “clock error” DT had still not impinged
on those I saw drawing up ancient horoscopes. The inaccu-
racy of their retrocalculations concerned them not at all. For
the Babylonian astrologers, more information was better than
less, and a diviner would have used solutions from all types
of “legitimate” texts to prove his point.
The same point can be made of Hunger and Pingree’s com-
ment on p184 that because some of the 7th century BC
authors of the Reports and Letters looked for an eclipse over
three or four consecutive months (presumably employing a
“solution” to eclipse prediction we would consider elemen-
tary, but which no doubt provided the diviners with better
terms of employment), this meant that the “Saros” was not
known back then. In fact, on p205 of MPAA I argue that
ARAK no. 502 and the predicted eclipses in LBAT 1414:Iif
(noted above), both provide some evidence that the Saros
period was known by the 8th century BC. Ignorance of evi-
dence in not evidence of ignorance.
As a corollary to this, the authors suggest on p187 that 41-
month and 47-month periods could have been used by the
scholars employed at Nineveh, although no direct evidence
(despite what they assert on p194) for their later use exists.
I consider this to be an unwarranted extrapolation, based pre-
sumably on the assumption that 41-month and 47-month peri-
ods are more elementary than the 223-month Saros period,
and therefore must belong to an earlier stage of the evolution
of astronomy in its unidirectional journey towards today!
The remainder of Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Chap-
ter C: Theoretical Texts) outlines the many and various meth-
ods employed by the astronomer-astrologers to predict celes-
tial phenomena. It begins with a discussion of eclipse
prediction using the Saros cycle, then treats functions
expressed as columns of numbers in non-ACT, often “early”
mathematical astronomical texts. These include a discussion
of column F, and the eclipse magnitude columns. The dis-
cussions are often terse, and consequently very hard to fol-
low without constant resort to the original publications. Inci-
dentally, the reference to Britton (1990) on p. 197 is missing
in the bibliography. See J.P. Britton “A Tale of Two Cycles:
Remarks on Column F” in Centaurus 33 (1990) pp. 57-69.
In their brief study on pp. 197-8 of the unit used to measure
both time and celestial distances known as the US, (often
called a “time-degree”) the authors neglect to mention that
the unit is apparently used to record a celestial distance in
the 7th century BC Saturn Record published by C.B.F.
Walker, and see my comments above on the use of this unit
to measure a distance in the 7th century BC Mercury Records
from Nineveh. The use of US to measure celestial distances
prior to its use in this manner in the zodiac is of some impor-
57 ASTRONOMY - ASTROLOGY IN MESOPOTAMIA
tance in the history and evolution of units. See further my
article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, cited above.
On pp. 203-5 the authors discuss the oldest evidence pre-
served that pertains to the characteristic periods after which
the planets repeat their heliacal phenomena (and/or longi-
tudes), exemplified by the Goal Year Periods in the so-called
Goals Year Texts. They neglect to mention the text DT 72
(BM 92684) + DT 78 (BM 92685) + 81-6-25,136 (BM
41523), a cryptic, astrological-astronomical series which pre-
serves a colophon reading: “of Assurbanipal, king of
[Assyria]”, and in lines 56’-66’ the names of the planets fol-
lowed by (in broken context) the lengths of their character-
istic periods. I see no reason not to date the composition of
this document to the 7th century BC, meaning that it preserves
the oldest evidence yet known for a knowledge of such peri-
ods. See MPAA pp. 193-5.
From pp. 212-270, the authors describe, sometimes in great
deal, the Ephemerides. The bibliographical section (pp. 212-
220) is particularly useful, and the authors are to be congrat-
ulated for the comprehensiveness of their description of the
mathematical methods employed in these compositions, and
especially for placing all the recent publications in the con-
text of O. Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts
(1955). They correctly observe on p265 that “a fundamental
problem for the mathematical planetary astronomy of the
Babylonians is that of the method(s) by which they derived
the rules and the parameters of their Systems from the obser-
vational data available to them”, but devote only 5 pages to
this field. For some reason they choose not to outline Neuge-
bauer’s convincing description in 1968 of the source of the
parameters for System B of the Planetary Ephemerides,
despite referring to it twice on pp. 236 and 269. Instead they
devote several of these pages to a critique of Swerdlow’s The
Babylonian Theory of the Planets (1998). Part of the criti-
cism centres around Hunger and Pingree’s view that the
Diaries were not connected with omens, and that the
Ephemerides were not designed to predict ominous events,
assertions made by Swerdlow with which I concur. I have
commented above on the connection between the data
recorded in the Diaries, and what was considered ominous.
The lunar Ephemerides calculated eclipses, month length, and
the “lunar six”, and the planetary Ephemerides predicted the
times and longitude of heliacal rising, disappearances, sta-
tions, and acronychal rising, where appropriate. Of these, all
were either directly or indirectly ominous. Eclipses, month
length, heliacal rising and disappearances were directly omi-
nous. The stations indicated when and where retrogression
would occur, and acronychal rising occurred during the mid-
dle of this ominous phase. The lunar six were indirectly omi-
nous, as were the dates of heliacal rising and disappearance.
Hunger and Pingree argue that the “precision” of the
Ephemerides was irrelevant to omens, but was it irrelevant
to diviners? I would not say that the Ephemerides did not ful-
fil functions other than the prediction of ominous phases, but
it seems ridiculous to argue that they were not intimately
linked to celestial divination.
Surprisingly, in their discussion of Swerdlow’s book,
Hunger and Pingree ignore the more significant criticism pub-
lished by J. Britton in his review in JHA 1999, who notes that
“the System A theory for Jupiter and both theories for Mars
reflect quite accurate synodic arcs which are inconsistent with
(those derived by Swerdlow) from even crude measurements
of synodic times.” In other words, Britton compares what
58
was predicted by System A for Jupiter and Systems A and B
for Mars with what actually occurred, and then compares this
with what would be predicted using a scheme dependant on
data derived from the record of the times of heliacal rising
and disappearances. He finds a better fit with the extant
Ephemerides than with Swerdlow’s reconstruction. Swerd-
low attempts to remedy this discrepancy in a new paper enti-
tled “Acronychal Risings in Babylonian Planetary Theory”
AHES 54 (1999) pp. 49-65..
Indeed, throughout Chapter C, Hunger and Pingree make
no comments on the accuracy or otherwise of the various
schemes employed in the Ephemerides. Aside from a rich and
detailed description of their contents, they barely comment
on the underlying structure of these remarkable compositions,
which plays an important part in their accuracy. They do note
briefly (e.g. pp. 229 and 268) that ease of computation played
a part in determining which numbers made up certain criti-
cal parameters, but they fail to mention how in the case of
column F of System B of the lunar Ephemerides ascending
numbers end in 0;0,10, while descending numbers end in
0;0,0. The values are thereby distinguishable at a glance. In
a similar way, values for full moons are easily distinguished
from those for new moons in these documents. These char-
acteristics depend on the initial value chosen, and show that
not only observation, but ease of use determined which value
was taken. Finally, the authors do not discuss the very impor-
tant way in which forms and units employed in celestial div-
ination are preserved in the Ephemerides. I discuss this at
length in MPAA Ch.4.1.2 and Ch.5.1.1, pointing to how the
360-day ideal year is preserved in the 360 US of the ecliptic
through which the Sun moves every year, and how the ideal
30-day month persists in the 30 tithis in a day in the plane-
tary Ephemerides. The 3:2 ratio of day lengths survives, as
does the linear interpolation of intermediate values (albeit in
a more refined way). Even the traditional 12 fingers assigned
to a full eclipse remain in the Ephemerides, although by the
latest periods of cuneiform writing a finger corresponded to
a celestial distance subtending 1/12°, giving a value for the
diameter of the Moon and Sun twice reality.
Astral Sciences concludes with an Appendix that lists the
literal translations of the Akkadian and Sumerian star names
against their modern equivalents, some of which have a ques-
tion mark following. The list draws on earlier work by Pin-
gree and J. Koch in particular, but without references I am
unclear whether or not every modern equivalent cited with-
out a following query is recognised by all scholars to be cor-
rect. The list’s usefulness is thereby somewhat diminished.
Hunger and Pingree have put together a very comprehensive
bibliography, although for some reason J. P. Britton’s work
is under-represented. In addition to the two absences noted
above, his 1987 paper “The Structure and Parameters of Col-
umn F” in the Aaboe Festschrift, From Ancient Omens to
Statistical Mechanics pp. 23-36, eds. J. L. Berggren and B.
R. Goldstein is missing. The author’s subject index usefully
includes the names of various scribes, and a table of tablet
numbers cited ends the typescript.
Most of what is presented in Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia
is, of course, published elsewhere, but many new contribu-
tions are made. Highlights include on pp. 63-5 the translation
of the unpublished text MLC 1866. This is useful, and I await
the publication of the images. Also, their analysis of the num-
bers of minas in AO 6478 as in large part multiples of 5/6 is
59 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVIII N° 1-2, januari-april 2001 60

most interesting (demonstrating as it does the continued

importance of numerical play in the purportedly practical
ziqpu tradition), as is their discussion of the dalbanna texts.
The discussion of the interrelationships of the non-mathe-
matical texts is most important. References to and extracts
from forthcoming publications by Hunger of the records of
planetary phenomena are mouth-watering. I agree with the
authors’ restorations of the reverse of BM 37266 on p206.
The authors suggest on p43 that surinnu refers to the lunar
crescent on the next to last day of the month.
The authors have a particular agenda with regard to the
stages of evolution of predictive astronomy, but fail to state
this. They seek elements of astronomy in divinatory mater-
ial, and in so doing misunderstand it. They judge texts dif-
ferent in purpose by the same astronomical criteria, for exam-
ple, the Letters and Reports, as if they were intended to
record phenomena as accurately as were the Diaries, say.
They resort to an ad hoc explanation with regard to the 41
and 47-month eclipse periods. They even appear to argue (p.
184) that predictions were interposed into the record of obser-
vations at a much later date — a date which merely corre-
sponds with their view as to the predictive capabilities of the
scribes. They appear uninterested in the underlying forms of
the Ephemerides which show their close relationship to the
divinatory traditions, imposing instead on this material the
modern opposition between astrology and astronomy. Despite
all this, the presentation of the material in each section is
comprehensive and lucid, and I personally will use Astral Sci-
ences in Mesopotamia as a first reference tool. Like Schu-
mann and Chopin’s Preludes, I feel that I can appreciate this
book, but unlike Schumann I am not concerned that the
Philistine will not recognise its value, but feel rather that it
is likely to be misused by the lay reader.

Wolfson College David BROWN

Oxford, March 2000