Babylonian astronomy

An object labelled the ivory prism was recovered from the ruins of

Babylonian astronomers developed zodiacal signs. They are made up of the division of the sky into three sets of thirty degrees and the constellations that inhabit each sector.[6]

The MUL.APIN contains catalogues of stars and constellations as well as schemes for predicting heliacal risings and settings of the planets, and lengths of daylight as measured by a water clock, gnomon, shadows, and intercalations. The Babylonian GU text arranges stars in 'strings' that lie along declination circles and thus measure right-ascensions or time intervals, and also employs the stars of the zenith, which are also separated by given right-ascensional differences.^[7][8][9]

Planetary theory

The Babylonians were the first civilization known to possess a functional theory of the planets.

In contrast to the

The Enuma Anu Enlil is a series of cuneiform tablets that gives insight on different sky omens Babylonian astronomers observed.^[17] Celestial bodies such as the Sun and Moon were given significant power as omens. Reports from Nineveh and Babylon, circa 2500-670 B.C., show lunar omens observed by the Mesopotamians. "When the moon disappears, evil will befall the land. When the moon disappears out of its reckoning, an eclipse will take place".^[18]

Astrolabes

The astrolabes (not to be mistaken for the later astronomical measurement device of the same name) are one of the earliest documented cuneiform tablets that discuss astronomy and date back to the Old Babylonian Kingdom. They are a list of thirty-six stars connected with the months in a year,^[6] generally considered to be written between 1800 and 1100 B.C. No complete texts have been found, but there is a modern compilation by Pinches, assembled from texts housed in the British Museum that is considered excellent by other historians who specialize in Babylonian astronomy. Two other texts concerning the astrolabes that should be mentioned are the Brussels and Berlin compilations. They offer similar information to the Pinches anthology, but do contain some differing information from each other.^[19]

The thirty-six stars that make up the astrolabes are believed to be derived from the astronomical traditions from three Mesopotamian city-states,

MUL.APIN is a collection of two cuneiform tablets (Tablet 1 and Tablet 2) that document aspects of Babylonian astronomy such as the movement of

Tablet 1 houses information that closely parallels information contained in astrolabe B. The similarities between Tablet 1 and astrolabe B show that the authors were inspired by the same source for at least some of the information. There are six lists of stars on this tablet that relate to sixty constellations in charted paths of the three groups of Babylonian star paths, Ea, Anu, and Enlil. There are also additions to the paths of both Anu and Enlil that are not found in astrolabe B.[21]

Relationship of calendar, mathematics and astronomy

The exploration of the Sun, Moon, and other celestial bodies affected the development of Mesopotamian culture. The study of the sky led to the development of a calendar and advanced mathematics in these societies. The Babylonians were not the first complex society to develop a calendar globally and nearby in North Africa, the Egyptians developed a calendar of their own. The Egyptian calendar was solar based, while the Babylonian calendar was lunar based. A potential blend between the two that has been noted by some historians is the adoption of a crude leap year by the Babylonians after the Egyptians developed one. The Babylonian leap year shares no similarities with the leap year practiced today. It involved the addition of a thirteenth month as a means to re-calibrate the calendar to better match the growing season.^[22]

Babylonian priests were the ones responsible for developing new forms of mathematics and did so to better calculate the movements of celestial bodies. One such priest, Nabu-rimanni, is the first documented Babylonian astronomer. He was a priest for the moon god and is credited with writing lunar and eclipse computation tables as well as other elaborate mathematical calculations. The computation tables are organized in seventeen or eighteen tables that document the orbiting speeds of planets and the Moon. His work was later recounted by astronomers during the Seleucid dynasty.^[22]

Aurorae

A team of scientists at the University of Tsukuba studied Assyrian cuneiform tablets, reporting unusual red skies which might be aurorae incidents, caused by geomagnetic storms between 680 and 650 BC.^[23]

Neo-Babylonian astronomy

Neo-Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy developed by

Aside from occasional interactions between the two, Babylonian astronomy was largely independent from Babylonian cosmology.^[14] Whereas Greek astronomers expressed "prejudice in favor of circles or spheres rotating with uniform motion", such a preference did not exist for Babylonian astronomers.^[29]

Contributions made by the Chaldean astronomers during this period include the discovery of

The only surviving planetary model from among the Chaldean astronomers is that of the Hellenistic

According to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, Seleucus may have proved the heliocentric theory by determining the constants of a geometric model for the heliocentric theory and by developing methods to compute planetary positions using this model. He may have used trigonometric methods that were available in his time, as he was a contemporary of Hipparchus.^[32]

None of his original writings or Greek translations have survived, though a fragment of his work has survived only in

Babylonian influence on Hellenistic astronomy

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Many of the works of ancient

Means of transmission

Historians have found evidence that Athens during the late 5th century may have been aware of Babylonian astronomy. astronomers, or astronomical concepts and practices through the documentation by Xenophon of Socrates telling his students to study astronomy to the extent of being able to tell the time of night from the stars. This skill is referenced in the poem of Aratos, which discusses telling the time of night from the zodiacal signs.[5]

See also

• Babylonian astrology
• Babylonian calendar
• Babylonian mathematics
• Babylonian star catalogues
• Egyptian astronomy
• History of astronomy (Section on Mesopotamia).
• Mayan astronomy
• MUL.APIN
• Pleiades
• Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa

References

Citations

1. ^ Friberg 2019.
2. ^ Brown 2000, p. 5–6,.
3. ^ Aaboe 1958, p. 209.
4. ^ Aaboe 1974, p. 21.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Van der Waerden 1951.
6. ^ ^{a b c} Rochberg-Halton 1983.
7. ^ Pingree 1998.
8. ^ Rochberg 2004.
9. ^ ^{a b} Evans 1998, p. 296–297.
10. ^ Holden 2006, p. 1.
11. ISBN 978-951-570-130-5
    .
12. ^ Lambert 1987, p. 93.
13. ^ ^{a b} Aaboe 1958.
14. ^ ^{a b} Rochberg 2002, p. 679.
15. ^ Hunger & Pingree 1999.
16. ^ Hunger & Pingree 1999, p. 1–33.
17. ^ Hunger & Pingree 1999, p. 12–20.
18. ^ Thompson, R. Campbell (1904). The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon. New York: D. Appleton & Company. pp. 451–460.
19. ^ ^{a b c} Van der Waerden 1949.
20. S2CID 222450259
    .
21. ^ ^{a b} Hunger & Pingree 1999, p. 57–65.
22. ^ ^{a b} Olmstead 1938.
23. ^ Hayakawa et al. 2019.
24. ^ Aaboe et al. 1991.
25. ^ Sarton 1955.
26. ^ Brown 2000.
27. ^ Aaboe 2001, p. 40–62.
28. ^ Ossendrijver 2016.
29. ^ Pingree 1992, p. 557.
30. ^ Leverington 2003, p. 6–7.
31. ^ Sarton 1955, p. 169.
32. ^ ^{a b c} Van der Waerden 1987.
33. ISBN 978-0333750889
    .
34. ISBN 88-07-10349-4
    .
35. ^ Van der Waerden 1987, p. 527.
36. ISBN 978-965-223-626-5
    .
37. ^ Aaboe 2001, p. 62–65.

Sources

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• Aaboe, Asger (1974). "Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 276 (1257): 21–42.
• Aaboe, Asger (2001). Episodes From the Early History of Astronomy. Springer.
• Aaboe, A.; Britton, J.P.; Henderson, J.A.; Neugebauer, O.; Sachs, A.J. (1991). "Saros Cycle Dates and Related Babylonian Astronomical Texts". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 81 (6): 1–75.
• Brown, David (2000). Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology. Brill.
• Evans, James (1998). The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. Oxford University Press.
• Friberg, Jöran (2019). "Three thousand years of sexagesimal numbers in Mesopotamian mathematical texts". Archive for History of Exact Sciences. 73: 183–216.
• Hayakawa, Hisashi; Mitsuma, Yasuyuki; Ebihara, Yusuke; Miyake, Fusa (2019). "The Earliest Candidates of Auroral Observations in Assyrian Astrological Reports: Insights on Solar Activity around 660 BCE". The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 884 (1): L18.
• Hetherington, Norris S. (1993). Cosmology : historical, literary, philosophical, religious, and scientific perspectives. CRC Press.
• Holden, James H. (2006). A History of Horoscopic Astrology. American Federation of Astr.
• Hunger, Hermann; Pingree, David (1999). Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia. Brill.
• Koch, Ulla Susanne (1995). Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination. Museum Tusculanum Press.
• Lambert, W.G. (1987). "Review: Babylonian Astrological Omens and Their Stars". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 107 (1): 93–96.
• Leverington, David (2003). Babylon to Voyager and Beyond: A History of Planetary Astronomy. Cambridge University Press.
• Neugebauer, O. (1948). "The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 4 (1): 1–38.
• Olmstead, A.T. (1938). "Babylonian Astronomy: Historical Sketch". The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. 55 (2): 113–129.
• Ossendrijver, Mathieu (2016). "Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter's position from the area under a time-velocity graph". Science. 351: 482–484.
• Pingree, David (1992). "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science". Isis. 83 (4): 554–563.
• Pingree, David (1998). "Legacies In Astronomy And Celestial Omens". In Dalley, Stephanie (ed.). The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford University Press. pp. 125–137.
• Rochberg, Francesca (2002). "A consideration of Babylonian astronomy within the historiography of science". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. 33 (4): 661–684.
• Rochberg, Francesca (2004). The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture. Cambridge University Press.
• Rochberg-Halton, F. (1983). "Stellar Distances in Early Babylonian Astronomy: A New Perspective on the Hilprecht Text (HS 229)". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 43 (3): 209–217.
• Sarton, George (1955). "Chaldaean Astronomy of the Last Three Centuries B. C." Journal of the American Oriental Society. 55 (3): 166–173.
• Steele, John (2019). "Explaining Babylonian Astronomy". Isis. 110 (2): 292–295.
• Van der Waerden, B.L. (1949). "Babylonian Astronomy. II. The Thirty-Six Stars". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 8 (1): 6–26.
• Van der Waerden, B.L. (1951). "Babylonian Astronomy. III. The Earliest Astronomical Computations". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 10 (1): 20–34.
• Van der Waerden, B.L. (1987). "Babylonian Astronomy. III. The Earliest Astronomical Computations". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 500 (1): 525–545.
• Watson, Rita; Horowitz, Wayne (2011). Writing Science Before the Greeks: A Naturalistic Analysis of the Babylonian Astronomical Treatise MUL.APIN. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub.
  ISBN 978-90-04-20230-6
  .

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Babylonian astronomy.

• Jones, Alexander. "The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods in Greek Numerical Astronomy." Isis, 82(1991): 441-453; reprinted in Michael Shank, ed. The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000.
  ISBN 0-226-74951-7
• Neugebauer, Otto. Astronomical Cuneiform Texts. 3 volumes. London:1956; 2nd edition, New York: Springer, 1983. (Commonly abbreviated as ACT).
• Toomer, G. J. "Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy." In A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, ed. Erle Leichty, Maria deJ. Ellis, and Pamela Gerardi, pp. 353–362. Philadelphia: Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 9, 1988.