Babylonian astronomy

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Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of

The origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western advances in the exact sciences are descendants in direct line from the work of the late Babylonian astronomers.^[6]

Old Babylonian astronomy

"Old" Babylonian astronomy was practiced during and after the

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.[9]

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.^[10][11][12] There are dozens of cuneiform Mesopotamian texts with real observations of eclipses, mainly from Babylonia.

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.^[22] 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".^[23]

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,^[9] 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.^[24]

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.[25]

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.^[26]

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.^[26]

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.^[27]

Neo-Babylonian astronomy

Neo-Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy developed by

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.^[45]

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

All this knowledge was transferred to the

Antiochus I; it is said that later he founded a school of astrology on the Greek island of Kos. Another candidate for teaching the Greeks about Babylonian astronomy/astrology was Sudines who was at the court of Attalus I Soter late in the 3rd century BC. ^{[citation needed}

]

Historians have also 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.[8]

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

Notes

1. ISBN 9789004101272. Archived
   from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
2. ^ "Time Division". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 3 July 2019. Retrieved 11 September 2018.
3. ^
   ISBN 90-5693-036-2
   .
4. ^
   doi:10.1111/j.1600-0498.1958.tb00499.x
   .
5. S2CID 122508567
   .
6. ISBN 978-0521227179
7. S2CID 181950933
   .
8. ^
   S2CID 222450259
   .
9. ^
   S2CID 161749034
   .
10. ISBN 978-0-19-814946-0
11. ^ Rochberg, Francesca (2004), The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture, Cambridge University Press
12. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-509539-5. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
13. ISBN 978-0-86690-463-6
    .
14. ISBN 978-951-570-130-5
    .
15. JSTOR 602955
    .
16. S2CID 163678063
    .
17. ^
    doi:10.1016/S0039-3681(02)00022-5
    .
18. ISBN 978-0-8153-0934-5
    .
19. ISBN 978-0-8153-0934-5
    .
20. ISBN 9789004101272. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
21. ISBN 9789004101272. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
22. ISBN 9789004101272. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
23. ^ Thompson, R. Campbell (1904). The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon. New York: D. Appleton & Company. pp. 451–460.
24. ^
    S2CID 222443741
    .
25. ^
    ISBN 9789004101272. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
26. ^
    S2CID 170628425
    .
27. S2CID 202565732
    .
28. JSTOR 1006543
    . One comprises what we have called "Saros Cycle Texts," which give the months of eclipse possibilities arranged in consistent cycles of 223 months (or 18 years).
29. JSTOR 595168
    .
30. ISBN 978-0-387-95136-2
31. S2CID 206644971
    . the Babylonian trapezoid procedures are geometrical in a different sense than the methods of … Greek astronomers, since the geometrical figures describe configurations not in physical space but in an abstract mathematical space defined by time and velocity (daily displacement).
32. ^ "Babylonian astronomers computed position of Jupiter with geometric methods". phys.org. Archived from the original on 2020-11-22. Retrieved 2016-01-29.
33. S2CID 68570164
    .
34. ISBN 978-87-7289-287-0
    .
35. ISBN 978-0-521-80840-8
    .
36. S2CID 162347339
    .
37. JSTOR 595168
    .
38. ^ William P. D. Wightman (1951, 1953), The Growth of Scientific Ideas, Yale University Press p.38.
39. ^
    S2CID 222087224
    .
40. ^ "Index of Ancient Greek Philosophers-Scientists". Archived from the original on 2009-03-21. Retrieved 2010-03-06.
41. ISBN 978-0333750889
    .
42. ^ Seleucus of Seleucia (ca. 190-unknown BCE) Archived 2015-12-28 at the Wayback Machine, ScienceWorld
43. S2CID 222087224
    .
44. ISBN 88-07-10349-4
    .
45. S2CID 222087224
    .
46. ISBN 978-965-223-626-5
    .
47. ^ Asger Aaboe, Episodes from the Early History of Astronomy, New York: Springer, 2001), pp. 62-5; Alexander Jones, "The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods in Greek Numerical Astronomy," in The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 99

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Babylonian astronomy.

• Aaboe, Asger. Episodes from the Early History of Astronomy. New York: Springer, 2001.
  ISBN 0-387-95136-9
• 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
• Kugler, F. X. Die Babylonische Mondrechnung ("The Babylonian lunar computation.") Freiburg im Breisgau, 1900.
• 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.
• 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
  .