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How did Babylon read eclipses and planets as omens?
Babylonian scholars read eclipses, planets and other sky events as messages from the gods, recording them in the Enūma Anu Enlil omen series and its commentaries. Reports sent to Assyrian kings tied sky signs to warnings for king and country, and rituals could be prescribed in response.
Facts checked on against 10 sources, 8 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| Old Babylonian period onward | The Enūma Anu Enlil series is written in ancient Mesopotamia and grows to 70 tablets with around 7,000 omens.1 |
|---|---|
| Hellenistic and later periods | The Mathematical Astronomical-Astrological Texts are dated to the Hellenistic and later periods.2 |
| Possibly from about 1800 BC | Lunar eclipse omens are among the first omen materials committed to writing, according to Erica Reiner.3 |
| c. 750 to 612 BC | Letters and Reports from Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian scholars to the Assyrian kings are the most informative textual sources for the period.2 |
| 714 BC | The earliest planetary mention in royal inscriptions appears in Sargon's Eighth Campaign.2 |
| 652 BC onward | The earliest Astronomical Diaries date from 652 BC, and their daily records include some values calculated by characteristic intervals.2 |
| Late 7th to 6th century BC | The Sippar fragment CCP 3.1.1.C, a commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil 1, is dated to the Chaldean or early Achaemenid period.45 |
| 321 BC | Anu-aba-uṣur copies the longest manuscript of a commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil, W 23300.6 |
What the omens were for
Pingree held that in the Babylonian system the stars and planets were regarded as manifestations of individual gods, and that changes in their quality and location indicated events for mankind, a country, or a specific king and his family.7
Mesopotamian celestial omens were concerned mainly with warnings for king and country, though rarely for an individual, and were not thought to affect destiny through direct stellar influence as in Greek horoscopic astrology.3
Pingree stated that protohoroscopes of the last four centuries BC were not part of astrology, since the phenomena were ominous rather than effective.7
How the omens were written and read
Diviners wrote omens using conditional and consequential sentences, and Enūma Anu Enlil tablets 23 to 30 concern the Sun, including its position at rising or setting, its conjunctions, and its colour.1
The commentary CCP 3.1.20.B.a explains base-text lines by making ambiguous wording specific, and astronomical interpretations are prominent in it, for example reading the phrase about Papsukkal as the moon god catching up with Saturn.6
A commentary on lunar eclipse entries uses aššu, 'because,' to justify its equations and šanîš, 'alternatively,' for other explanations of the same entry.8
The phrase ana muḫḫi ... qabi, 'it is said on account of,' narrowed an eclipse omen to a particular season, summer.8
The commentary CCP 3.1.20.B.a glosses the colour-term omens by treating the planets as their referent, and it links the Pleiades and Taurus region to plague in an eclipse entry for the month of Araḫsamnu.8
Royal reports and rituals
Brown describes a Neo-Assyrian scholar's Report that predicted within one month that the Moon and Sun would make an eclipse, and advised the king to perform an apotropaic namburbi ritual.2
Brown describes a Report from the late eighth or seventh century BC that links a Moon appearance on the 30th day to the Ablamu devouring the land of Subartu, a sample of the omen form used by Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian scholars.2
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Enūma Anu Enlil opens with a bilingual introduction in which Anu, Enlil and Ea (or Enki) appoint Sîn, or in the Akkadian version Šamaš, as the omen-bearing sign in the sky, according to Lambert's reading.4
Enūma Eliš, the Babylonian creation epic, describes Marduk assigning planets or stations to the gods and goddesses, so that the planets were considered manifestations of the gods.1
Walton, a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, read the sun and moon 'standing' or 'waiting' in Joshua 10:12-13 against Mesopotamian celestial omen terminology.9
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Brown argues that cuneiform texts of the EAE Paradigm never include or refer to accurate predictions of celestial phenomena, and that round values for recurring periods in those texts had a divinatory role.2
Pingree argued that the tablets contain the first recorded realization of the periodicity of certain celestial phenomena and the first attempts at mathematical models for predicting them, and that the Babylonians were interested in horizon phenomena they regarded as omens.7
Kak states that Babylonian planetary calculations addressed the dates and places of first and last visible heliacal risings, stationary points and opposition, and that Babylonian intercalations followed the Metonic cycle from the mid-fifth century.10
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Scholars disagree on whether the omen series' periodic values were a route to prediction or a divinatory device; Brown holds that the round values served divination, while Pingree and Kak describe a genuine development toward mathematical prediction.2710
- Celestial omen practice in Mesopotamia was a system of reading warnings for the king and state, not a system of personal fate, and its scholarly products were the source of later mathematical astronomy.37
Not yet confirmed
- How far did the period-based values in the omen commentaries serve prediction, and how far did they serve divination?
- When did the Babylonian zodiac of 30-degree signs replace the older constellation schemes?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- dergipark.org.tr: Enūma Anu-Enlil’de Geçen Bazı Güneş Kehanetleri ile İlgili Yorumlar - OANNES - International Journal of Ancient History. Read on · Reference
- Internet Archive: Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy Astrology. Read on · Primary text
- archive.org: Full text of "[Astral Magic in Babylonia](https://archive.org/details/AstralMagicInBabylonia)". Read on · Primary text
- ccp.yale.edu: CCP 3.1.1.C - Enūma Anu Enlil 1 C | Cuneiform Commentaries Project. Read on · University
- ccp.yale.edu: CCP 3.1.u40 - Enūma Anu Enlil (?) | Cuneiform Commentaries Project. Read on · University
- ccp.yale.edu: CCP 3.1.20.B.a - Enūma Anu Enlil 20 B | Cuneiform Commentaries Project. Read on · University
- Internet Archive: Pathways into the Study of Ancient Sciences. Read on · Primary text
- ccp.yale.edu: CCP 3.1.16 - Enūma Anu Enlil 16-19 | Cuneiform Commentaries Project. Read on · University
- biblearchaeology.org: Joshua's "Long Day" And Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts | Associates For Biblical Research. Read on · Reference
- Internet Archive: Babylonian and Indian Astronomy: Early Connections. Read on · Primary text